Tidal energy resource assessments using moving vessel measurements
Abstract
The first edition of the IEC technical specification (TS) for tidal energy resource assessment and characterization, TS 62600-201, provides a unified and internationally accepted methodology for producing the velocity probability distributions at locations of tidal energy converters (TEC) such that the annual energy production (AEP) can be accurately computed. One of the acceptable approaches for determining the velocity distributions of tidal currents for smaller projects is to adopt a measurement-based method using fixed instruments at each TEC location. A new approach is under consideration to provide estimates of the probability distribution at additional TEC locations, coupling one or more fixed Instrument (FI) current profiler measurements with mobile vessel (MV) current profiler measurements. It is much more affordable to deploy a long-term bottom-mounted instrument at one site and conduct short-record boat-based measurement for the others than deploying a long-term bottom-mounted instrument at each proposed TEC locations. The full length tidal currents time series at these other sites will then be inferred from the long-term tidal current measurement and be used to generate the probability distribution for each site to be used for the AEP calculation. Due to the short duration of the MV measurement, the method chosen is a linear regression, which builds the relationship between the FI measurement and the MV tidal time series. The method is evaluated by using synthetic data for 96 example turbine arrays created from the US tidal energy database. The accuracy and the sensitivity of the MV method to parameters such as the timing and duration of the measurements is evaluated in order to determine the best practice guidelines for implementing this method in the 2nd edition of the IEC TS. SNL is managed and operated by NTESS under DOE NNSA contract DE-NA0003525
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2021
- Bibcode:
- 2021AGUFMGC14D..05H