Shipboard acoustic doppler current profiler surveys to assess tidal current resources

A compelling aspect of power generation from tidal currents is the predictability of the resource, which is generated by the gravitational pull of the sun and moon on the earth's oceans. For technical feasibility studies, it is presupposed that once the currents at a site have been well characterized it is possible to make accurate predictions of the electricity that would be generated by an array of turbines. These data are generally collected by Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (ADCP), which use active acoustics to measure currents throughout the water column. Stationary ADCP deployments in Admiralty Inlet, WA, indicate operationally important variability over length scales less than 100 m and use of shipboard ADCP surveys aims to identify regions of peak currents without deploying a high resolution grid of stationary ADCPs. Shipboard surveys involve multiple laps during a tidal cycle around a short “racetrack”. Data are aggregated within bins such that multiple laps produce time series at 100 m spatial resolution along the track. The time series is then fitted with a half sine wave assuming that each tidal cycle can be represented as such due to the periodic nature of tidal currents. The amplitude and timing of the peak currents along the survey track are estimated from the fit. Multiple ebb current surveys indicate that relative amplitude trends are consistent between cycles of differing strength and time of the year. Therefore, by overlapping surveys, greater spatial coverage can be achieved from multiple cycles without changing the survey characteristics. Results obtained to date suggest a noise floor of approximately ±15 minutes for phase. This method could be applied to other tidal energy sites as a lower cost alternative to siting studies using arrays of stationary ADCPs.