Scotland has substantial wave and tidal energy resources and is at the forefront of the development of marine renewable technologies and ocean energy exploitation. The next phase will see these wave and tidal devices deployed in arrays, with many sites being developed. Although developers have entered into agreements with The Crown Estate for seabed leases, all projects remain subject to licensing requirements under the Marine Scotland Act (2010).
The research in this project will focus on modelling full resource-to-wire dynamic models of tidal arrays in order to investigate and optimise their operation. The expected impact of this study is providing industry with an understanding and guidelines of the applicability of the different electrical layouts to specific locations and size of the arrays.
Compare different generator technologies and control theories
Validate models using real measured data
Perform harmonic analysis and accurate loss modelling based on temperature/frequency variations
Suggest cost-effective solutions for device developers
This project aims to innovate and improved solutions for the management of power flows in a hybrid electrical power system, to provide a secure, reliable, and high quality supply to varying load demands. The expected research outcome is the design of a robust and fault-tolerant management system, featuring higher efficiency and improved techno-economic performance.
Optimal system sizing through linear programming
Testing and analysis of an off-the-shelf hybrid system
Novel control system design for optimised performance
The integration of a greater proportion of renewable energy, compounded by the rise in small scale distributed generation, is making it increasingly difficult to balance demand and supply of electricity without adequate energy storage facilities. However, the effective deployment of these solutions at any particular location will require an understanding of the local energy system at the time. Conversion between energy vectors will also be required not just to meet storage needs, but also to allow major shifts from fossil fuels to low carbon energy in applications like heat and transport. Hydrogen is an energy vector that is particularly versatile from this viewpoint.
This project will design, build, install and operate an open ocean 4.5MW tidal energy farm in the Inner Sound in the Pentland Firth, off the Northern coast of Scotland. The project ("Clearwater") will demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of a multi-turbine tidal energy array, an essential step to catalyse development of commercial projects in the EU ocean energy industry. Project Clearwater provides a credible, robustly implemented transition from high cost single turbine demonstration deployments of marine turbines to economically viable multi-hundred turbine arrays in oceans and managed water assets across Europe and the wider global market.
DTOcean is a European collaborative project funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Development, more specifically under the call ENERGY 2013-1.
The drive to meet the UK’s ambitious deployment targets for offshore renewable energy technologies requires the development of new techniques and technologies to design, build, install, operate, and maintain devices in hostile environments at affordable economic cost with minimal environmental impact. It requires a supply of highly trained scientists and engineers to deliver their skills across the sector. The Universities of Edinburgh, Strathclyde and Exeter together with the Scottish Association for Marine Science and HR-Wallingford form a partnership to deliver the EPSRC/ETI Industrial Doctorate Centre in Offshore Renewable Energy (IDCORE).
A full tidal array has not been installed anywhere, commercially to date. A number of the leading turbine manufacturers have part or full scale working prototypes which are under-going testing in various sites the majority of which are enclosed in semi-test environments. In order to move this nascent technology into the commercial arena and expedite market deployment, it is necessary to establish an array of turbines in one site to verify the performance capability and environmental characteristics of a full array.
Wave energy has a great potential as renewable source of electricity. Studies have demonstrated that significant percentage of world electricity could be produced by Wave Energy Converters (WECs). However electricity generation from waves still lacks of spreading because the combination of harsh environment and form of energy makes the technical development of cost effective WECs particularly difficult.
