Optimising the Operation of Tidal Range Schemes

Abstract

Marine renewable energy, including tidal renewable energy, is one of the less exploited sources of energy that could contribute to energy demand, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Amongst several proposals to build tidal range structure (TRS), a tidal lagoon has been proposed for construction in Swansea Bay, in the South West of the UK, but this scheme was recently rejected by the UK government due to the high electricity costs. This decision makes the optimisation of such schemes more important for the future. This study proposes various novel approaches by breaking the operation into small components to optimise the operation of TRS using a widely used 0-D modelling methodology. The approach results in a minimum 10% increase in energy output, without the inclusion of pumping, in comparison to the maximum energy output using a similar operation for all tides. This increase in energy will be approximately 25% more when pumping is included. The optimised operation schemes are used to simulate the lagoon operation using a 2-D model and the differences between the results are highlighted.