Tidal Energy Industry Gets Turbulence Guidance

The Guidance for the tidal energy industry on turbulence in marine environment, formulated from the TiME (Turbulence in Marine Environments) project, has been released. 

The project, funded by the Scottish Government and managed by the Carbon Trust through the Marine Renewables Commercialisation Fund (MRCF) Array Technology Innovation Programme, was developed to improve the understanding of the effect of marine turbulence on tidal arrays in Scottish waters.

The TiME project consortium consists of partners Partrac, Ocean Array Systems, ABPmer, and IT Power.

Turbulence was measured by Partrac in tidal environments of both the Sound of Islay and the Inner Sound, Pentland Firth, using novel methods and technologies so that each can be evaluated, and turbulence could be mapped across differing tidal energy development sites. ABPmer then incorporated the data in resource characterisation.

Ocean Array Systems (OAS) has provided turbulence characterisation and hydrodynamic analyses, and IT Power has contributed with engineering design, device performance and tidal turbine array modelling.

The project team used the information and research to develop Turbulence Guidance through extensive engagement with the tidal energy industry,

The principle outcomes of the project are:

• New methods have been developed and tested to measure and characterise turbulence.
• Data from these new methods were then used to show that designing tidal turbines and array layouts to the true turbulence existing at different points in a site could lead to significant cost reductions.

Image: IT Power