Tidal Energy Power and Cost Modelling

Tidal energy is an emerging renewable technology with huge potential to play a major role in the energy transition as an element of distributed hybrid renewable energy systems. Since tidal energy is an immature technology there is a lot of room for development, resulting in the potential for rapid changes in power and cost parameters. A lack of reliable up-to-date data results in high uncertainty, particularly in cost data. We provide an up-to-date estimate for cost and power data, based on current literature for both stream and range technologies. In this paper first, we present the theory that governs the power generated from the tidal stream and tidal range devices together with power coefficient and efficiency values. It is followed by the analysis of the available cost data for various projects towards producing a general cost model for tidal technologies as a function of their installed capacity and the associated trends are presented.