Abstract
Tidal resources are highly variable, spatially and temporally. 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 will build on and expand the simplified tidal analysis methods adopted in [1] and other simplified regional and national scale resource assessments. High quality data collection for interesting sites is highly desirable but expensive, difficult to extrapolate over a larger area, and hence unsuitable for national scale resource analysis. Existing publicly available datasets have so far typically been used to examine the resource. A methodology to combine all of the available datasets to produce an improved resource assessment methodology is desirable.
Combining datasets will only be suitable if there is good correlation and consistency between them. The suitability of combining three UK wide datasets will be examined in this analysis. The data sources considered are:
• UK Moored Current Meter Data,
• UK Hydrographic Office publications, and the
• DTI Atlas of UK Marine Renewable Energy Resource.
The datasets do not generally coincide spatially or temporally. Analysis to enable direct comparison of these datasets for a case study region will be presented. This will inform whether the methodology of analysis and combining of datasets has potential for application at larger scales. If with additional processing, datasets can be combined, considerable improvement will potentially be realised in analysing the UK tidal energy resource. Future work is intended to combine outputs from this research with similar datasets for other intermittent renewable resources in order to examine their combined output and their potential integration into the existing electrical network infrastructure.