Analysis and comparison of tidal datasets for resource assessment and network modelling

This paper presents research being undertaken as part of the EPSRC Supergen FlexNet consortium to analyse the spatial and temporal behaviour of the UK wave, tidal, on- and off- shore wind resources. The UK has extensive renewable resources that can potentially be developed to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation. The study explores the availability of tidal current energy in terms of its timing, location and extent. The tidal resource is highly spatially and temporally variable. For tidal current energy to be economically exploited, certain conditions need to be fulfilled. Principally the strength of the resource needs to be quantified before it can be effectively utilised. This paper looks at the energy output from a case study site and considers matters that need to be addressed with intermittent but predictable energy such as tidal currents. Tidal current velocity distributions for this site are obtained and used to evaluate the energy that can be exploited by a typical device. Future work is intended to combine outputs from this research with similar datasets for other renewable resources in order to examine their combined impact and integration into the existing electrical network infrastructure.