Abstract
When conducting tidal energy resource characterization and assessment, it is important to capture the strong variations of tidal currents in time and space. Field measurements can quantify many of these variations, which have both deterministic and stochastic components. The deterministic components occur on timescales of hours to years. As such, they are repeatable and well-suited to harmonic analyses associated with astronomical tidal forcing. The stochastic components are well-suited to statistical descriptions of fluid turbulence , from the short scales (milliseconds and millimeters), where dissipation occurs, to the long scales (seconds and meters), where large eddies occur. While the resolution of deterministic components may be adequate for characterizing annual energy production, both components need to be quantified to determine design loads on tidal energy conversion devices. In addition to the direct utility of field measurements to characterize and assess the tidal energy resource, field measurements are also essential to validate computational models used to assess the resource over large spatial domains.
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Notes
- 1.
Several figures, which have not been published previously in academic papers, use data from this case study. The data and more information regarding the case study are available at http://depts.washington.edu/nnmrec/project_meas.html#admiralty.
- 2.
Many early tidal resource assessments at the site, regional, and national levels did, however, attempt to do this, prior to the emergence of a better understanding of energy balances in tidal channels.
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Thomson, J., Polagye, B., Neary, V.S. (2017). Tidal Energy Resource Measurements. In: Yang, Z., Copping, A. (eds) Marine Renewable Energy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53536-4_5
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