Journal
RENEWABLE ENERGY
Volume 114, Issue -, Pages 1160-1179Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2017.07.058
Keywords
Tidal stream energy; Marine renewable energy; Tidal stream turbine array; Pentland Firth; NW European Shelf; FVCOM
Funding
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) [EP-K012851-1]
- NOC National Capability programme in Ocean Modelling
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [EP/M014738/1, EP/K012851/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- Natural Environment Research Council [noc010010] Funding Source: researchfish
- EPSRC [EP/K012851/1, EP/M014738/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- NERC [noc010010] Funding Source: UKRI
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The tidal stream energy sector is now at the stage of deploying the world's first pre-commercial arrays of multiple turbines. It is time to study the environmental effects of much larger full-size arrays, to scale and site them appropriately. A theoretical array of tidal stream turbines was designed for the Pentland Firth (UK), a strait between Scotland and the Orkney Islands, which has very fast tidal currents. The practical power resource of a large array spanning the Pentland Firth was estimated to be 1.64 GW on average. The ocean response to this amount of energy extraction was simulated by an unstructured grid three-dimensional FVCOM (Finite Volume Community Ocean Model) and analysed on both short-term and seasonal timescales. Tidal elevation mainly increases upstream of the tidal array, while a decrease is observed downstream, along the UK east coast. Tidal and residual flows are also affected: they can slow down due to the turbines action or speed up due to flow diversion and blockage processes, on both a local and regional scale. The strongest signal in tidal velocities is an overall reduction, which can in turn decrease the energy of tidal mixing and perturb the seasonal stratification on the NW European Shelf. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
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