Hydrokinetic tidal energy resource assessment following international electrotechnical commission guidelines

Energetic tidal streams are an especially attractive source of clean energy due to the daily occurrence of high tidal flows. However, before any deployment of tidal turbine farms, it is essential to perform a resource assessment depending on the scope and scale of the project. The International Electrotechnical Commission has developed a technical specification for assessing the tidal stream resource “IEC TS 62600-201” to aid in this effort: determine a particular site’s feasibility and design the project layout. In this study, we implemented and validated a three-dimensional numerical model and provided results following the specification for a ‘Stage 2’ project layout design in a highly energetic tidal channel: Tacoma Narrows of Puget Sound, in the State of Washington, USA. Implementation of the numerical model based on the specification has helped estimate the annual energy production with higher model accuracy. We also used the same setup to evaluate the undisturbed theoretical and technical resources, where the latter included energy extraction from the flow field arranging a hypothetical tidal energy converter array. Ultimately, this work has shown the important role of the technical specification in larger project layout design, which can simultaneously act as a benchmark for other ‘Stage 2’ theoretical and technical resource assessment studies worldwide.