IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/renene/v114y2017ipbp1160-1179.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Multi-scale ocean response to a large tidal stream turbine array

Author

Listed:
  • De Dominicis, Michela
  • O'Hara Murray, Rory
  • Wolf, Judith

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • De Dominicis, Michela & O'Hara Murray, Rory & Wolf, Judith, 2017. "Multi-scale ocean response to a large tidal stream turbine array," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 114(PB), pages 1160-1179.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:114:y:2017:i:pb:p:1160-1179
    DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2017.07.058
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014811730678X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.renene.2017.07.058?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ramos, V. & Carballo, R. & Álvarez, M. & Sánchez, M. & Iglesias, G., 2013. "Assessment of the impacts of tidal stream energy through high-resolution numerical modeling," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 541-554.
    2. Thiébot, Jérôme & Bailly du Bois, Pascal & Guillou, Sylvain, 2015. "Numerical modeling of the effect of tidal stream turbines on the hydrodynamics and the sediment transport – Application to the Alderney Race (Raz Blanchard), France," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 356-365.
    3. Bahaj, AbuBakr S., 2011. "Generating electricity from the oceans," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 15(7), pages 3399-3416, September.
    4. Defne, Zafer & Haas, Kevin A. & Fritz, Hermann M., 2011. "Numerical modeling of tidal currents and the effects of power extraction on estuarine hydrodynamics along the Georgia coast, USA," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(12), pages 3461-3471.
    5. Funke, S.W. & Farrell, P.E. & Piggott, M.D., 2014. "Tidal turbine array optimisation using the adjoint approach," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 658-673.
    6. Robins, Peter E. & Neill, Simon P. & Lewis, Matt J., 2014. "Impact of tidal-stream arrays in relation to the natural variability of sedimentary processes," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 311-321.
    7. Martin-Short, R. & Hill, J. & Kramer, S.C. & Avdis, A. & Allison, P.A. & Piggott, M.D., 2015. "Tidal resource extraction in the Pentland Firth, UK: Potential impacts on flow regime and sediment transport in the Inner Sound of Stroma," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 596-607.
    8. Ahmadian, Reza & Falconer, Roger & Bockelmann-Evans, Bettina, 2012. "Far-field modelling of the hydro-environmental impact of tidal stream turbines," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 107-116.
    9. Goward Brown, Alice J. & Neill, Simon P. & Lewis, Matthew J., 2017. "Tidal energy extraction in three-dimensional ocean models," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 114(PA), pages 244-257.
    10. Pelc, Robin & Fujita, Rod M., 2002. "Renewable energy from the ocean," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 471-479, November.
    11. Plew, David R. & Stevens, Craig L., 2013. "Numerical modelling of the effect of turbines on currents in a tidal channel – Tory Channel, New Zealand," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 269-282.
    12. Mycek, Paul & Gaurier, Benoît & Germain, Grégory & Pinon, Grégory & Rivoalen, Elie, 2014. "Experimental study of the turbulence intensity effects on marine current turbines behaviour. Part II: Two interacting turbines," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 876-892.
    13. Neill, Simon P. & Jordan, James R. & Couch, Scott J., 2012. "Impact of tidal energy converter (TEC) arrays on the dynamics of headland sand banks," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 387-397.
    14. Mycek, Paul & Gaurier, Benoît & Germain, Grégory & Pinon, Grégory & Rivoalen, Elie, 2014. "Experimental study of the turbulence intensity effects on marine current turbines behaviour. Part I: One single turbine," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 729-746.
    15. Chen, Long & Lam, Wei-Haur, 2014. "Slipstream between marine current turbine and seabed," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 801-810.
    16. Myers, L.E. & Bahaj, A.S., 2012. "An experimental investigation simulating flow effects in first generation marine current energy converter arrays," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 28-36.
    17. Miller, Peter I. & Christodoulou, Stelios, 2014. "Frequent locations of oceanic fronts as an indicator of pelagic diversity: Application to marine protected areas and renewables," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 318-329.
    18. Yang, Zhaoqing & Wang, Taiping & Copping, Andrea E., 2013. "Modeling tidal stream energy extraction and its effects on transport processes in a tidal channel and bay system using a three-dimensional coastal ocean model," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 605-613.
    19. Fairley, I. & Masters, I. & Karunarathna, H., 2015. "The cumulative impact of tidal stream turbine arrays on sediment transport in the Pentland Firth," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 755-769.
    20. Lewis, M. & Neill, S.P. & Robins, P.E. & Hashemi, M.R., 2015. "Resource assessment for future generations of tidal-stream energy arrays," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 403-415.
    21. O’Hara Murray, Rory & Gallego, Alejandro, 2017. "A modelling study of the tidal stream resource of the Pentland Firth, Scotland," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 102(PB), pages 326-340.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Li, Xiaorong & Li, Ming & Amoudry, Laurent O. & Ramirez-Mendoza, Rafael & Thorne, Peter D. & Song, Qingyang & Zheng, Peng & Simmons, Stephen M. & Jordan, Laura-Beth & McLelland, Stuart J., 2020. "Three-dimensional modelling of suspended sediment transport in the far wake of tidal stream turbines," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 956-965.
    2. Li, Gang & Zhu, Weidong, 2023. "Tidal current energy harvesting technologies: A review of current status and life cycle assessment," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    3. Lilian Lieber & Shaun Fraser & Daniel Coles & W. Alex M. Nimmo-Smith, 2024. "Sheared turbulent flows and wake dynamics of an idled floating tidal turbine," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-17, December.
    4. Guillou, Nicolas & Thiébot, Jérôme & Chapalain, Georges, 2019. "Turbines’ effects on water renewal within a marine tidal stream energy site," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    5. Niebuhr, C.M. & Schmidt, S. & van Dijk, M. & Smith, L. & Neary, V.S., 2022. "A review of commercial numerical modelling approaches for axial hydrokinetic turbine wake analysis in channel flow," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    6. María José Suárez-López & Rodolfo Espina-Valdés & Víctor Manuel Fernández Pacheco & Antonio Navarro Manso & Eduardo Blanco-Marigorta & Eduardo Álvarez-Álvarez, 2019. "A Review of Software Tools to Study the Energetic Potential of Tidal Currents," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(9), pages 1-19, May.
    7. Deb, Mithun & Yang, Zhaoqing & Haas, Kevin & Wang, Taiping, 2024. "Hydrokinetic tidal energy resource assessment following international electrotechnical commission guidelines," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 229(C).
    8. Guerra, Maricarmen & Hay, Alex E. & Karsten, Richard & Trowse, Gregory & Cheel, Richard A., 2021. "Turbulent flow mapping in a high-flow tidal channel using mobile acoustic Doppler current profilers," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 759-772.
    9. Hachmann, Christoph & Stallard, Tim & Stansby, Peter & Lin, Binliang, 2021. "Experimentally validated study of the impact of operating strategies on power efficiency of a turbine array in a bi-directional tidal channel," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 1408-1426.
    10. Soto-Rivas, Karina & Richter, David & Escauriaza, Cristian, 2022. "Flow effects of finite-sized tidal turbine arrays in the Chacao Channel, Southern Chile," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 195(C), pages 637-647.
    11. Artal, Osvaldo & Pizarro, Oscar & Sepúlveda, Héctor H., 2019. "The impact of spring-neap tidal-stream cycles in tidal energy assessments in the Chilean Inland Sea," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 496-506.
    12. Álvarez, M. & Ramos, V. & Carballo, R. & Arean, N. & Torres, M. & Iglesias, G., 2020. "The influence of dredging for locating a tidal stream energy farm," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 242-253.
    13. Deng, Guizhong & Zhang, Zhaoru & Li, Ye & Liu, Hailong & Xu, Wentao & Pan, Yulin, 2020. "Prospective of development of large-scale tidal current turbine array: An example numerical investigation of Zhejiang, China," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 264(C).
    14. Guerra, Maricarmen & Thomson, Jim, 2019. "Wake measurements from a hydrokinetic river turbine," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 483-495.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nash, S. & Phoenix, A., 2017. "A review of the current understanding of the hydro-environmental impacts of energy removal by tidal turbines," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 648-662.
    2. Deng, Guizhong & Zhang, Zhaoru & Li, Ye & Liu, Hailong & Xu, Wentao & Pan, Yulin, 2020. "Prospective of development of large-scale tidal current turbine array: An example numerical investigation of Zhejiang, China," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 264(C).
    3. Fairley, I. & Masters, I. & Karunarathna, H., 2015. "The cumulative impact of tidal stream turbine arrays on sediment transport in the Pentland Firth," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 755-769.
    4. Marco Piano & Peter E. Robins & Alan G. Davies & Simon P. Neill, 2018. "The Influence of Intra-Array Wake Dynamics on Depth-Averaged Kinetic Tidal Turbine Energy Extraction Simulations," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(10), pages 1-21, October.
    5. Li, Xiaorong & Li, Ming & McLelland, Stuart J. & Jordan, Laura-Beth & Simmons, Stephen M. & Amoudry, Laurent O. & Ramirez-Mendoza, Rafael & Thorne, Peter D., 2017. "Modelling tidal stream turbines in a three-dimensional wave-current fully coupled oceanographic model," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 114(PA), pages 297-307.
    6. Ian Masters & Alison Williams & T. Nick Croft & Michael Togneri & Matt Edmunds & Enayatollah Zangiabadi & Iain Fairley & Harshinie Karunarathna, 2015. "A Comparison of Numerical Modelling Techniques for Tidal Stream Turbine Analysis," Energies, MDPI, vol. 8(8), pages 1-21, July.
    7. Guillou, Nicolas & Thiébot, Jérôme, 2016. "The impact of seabed rock roughness on tidal stream power extraction," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 762-773.
    8. Edmunds, Matt & Williams, Alison J. & Masters, Ian & Banerjee, Arindam & VanZwieten, James H., 2020. "A spatially nonlinear generalised actuator disk model for the simulation of horizontal axis wind and tidal turbines," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    9. Haverson, David & Bacon, John & Smith, Helen C.M. & Venugopal, Vengatesan & Xiao, Qing, 2018. "Modelling the hydrodynamic and morphological impacts of a tidal stream development in Ramsey Sound," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 876-887.
    10. Goss, Z.L. & Coles, D.S. & Kramer, S.C. & Piggott, M.D., 2021. "Efficient economic optimisation of large-scale tidal stream arrays," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 295(C).
    11. Li, Xiaorong & Li, Ming & Jordan, Laura-Beth & McLelland, Stuart & Parsons, Daniel R. & Amoudry, Laurent O. & Song, Qingyang & Comerford, Liam, 2019. "Modelling impacts of tidal stream turbines on surface waves," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 725-734.
    12. Li, Xiaorong & Li, Ming & Wolf, Judith & Williams, Alison J. & Badoe, Charles & Masters, Ian, 2024. "Local and regional interactions between tidal stream turbines and coastal environment," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 229(C).
    13. de Fockert, Anton & Bijlsma, Arnout C. & O'Mahoney, Tom S.D. & Verbruggen, Wilbert & Scheijgrond, Peter C. & Wang, Zheng B., 2023. "Assessment of the impact of tidal power extraction from the Eastern Scheldt storm surge barrier through the evaluation of a pilot plant," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 213(C), pages 109-120.
    14. Wei-Bo Chen & Hongey Chen & Lee-Yaw Lin & Yi-Chiang Yu, 2017. "Tidal Current Power Resources and Influence of Sea-Level Rise in the Coastal Waters of Kinmen Island, Taiwan," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-15, May.
    15. Marta-Almeida, Martinho & Cirano, Mauro & Guedes Soares, Carlos & Lessa, Guilherme C., 2017. "A numerical tidal stream energy assessment study for Baía de Todos os Santos, Brazil," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 271-287.
    16. Auguste, Christelle & Nader, Jean-Roch & Marsh, Philip & Penesis, Irene & Cossu, Remo, 2022. "Modelling the influence of Tidal Energy Converters on sediment dynamics in Banks Strait, Tasmania," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 1105-1119.
    17. Goward Brown, Alice J. & Neill, Simon P. & Lewis, Matthew J., 2017. "Tidal energy extraction in three-dimensional ocean models," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 114(PA), pages 244-257.
    18. Christelle Auguste & Philip Marsh & Jean-Roch Nader & Remo Cossu & Irene Penesis, 2020. "Towards a Tidal Farm in Banks Strait, Tasmania: Influence of Tidal Array on Hydrodynamics," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-22, October.
    19. Roche, R.C. & Walker-Springett, K. & Robins, P.E. & Jones, J. & Veneruso, G. & Whitton, T.A. & Piano, M. & Ward, S.L. & Duce, C.E. & Waggitt, J.J. & Walker-Springett, G.R. & Neill, S.P. & Lewis, M.J. , 2016. "Research priorities for assessing potential impacts of emerging marine renewable energy technologies: Insights from developments in Wales (UK)," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 1327-1341.
    20. Álvarez, M. & Ramos, V. & Carballo, R. & Arean, N. & Torres, M. & Iglesias, G., 2020. "The influence of dredging for locating a tidal stream energy farm," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 242-253.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:114:y:2017:i:pb:p:1160-1179. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/renewable-energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.