About the Project
Principle Investigator: Dr Benjamin Williamson
For the first time, commercial-scale tidal energy deployments are being supported by UK Government market support mechanisms, driving the growth of the sector. This increasing the need for new sites to be established and pass through the planning and consenting process. This project addresses the significant costs and uncertainties associated with collecting environmental data for tidal energy sites. The research will develop environmental monitoring systems for floating tidal stream turbines, collating and presenting data. An improvement to this process could increase investor confidence and support regulators to consent with confidence, facilitating the growth of floating tidal stream energy and a transition from individual devices to arrays.
In partnership with Orbital Marine Power, the systems will be tested on their O2 device at the Fall of Warness at the European Marine Energy Centre. The project will demonstrate applicability and impact across the sector and will address the challenges of monitoring environmental interactions with floating turbines, such as the risk of marine life collisions with turbines and changes in wake patterns that impact habitats.
Existing environmental monitoring efforts have focused on seabed-mounted turbines. This project will review sensor selection, placement and configuration on a floating turbine in an operational site and then move to trials and demonstration. The project will demonstrate data collection on the O2 device at EMEC, whilst also developing algorithms for automating data processing and sensor fusion and applied to a test dataset. Ultimately it will provide an open-source evaluation of monitoring system capabilities for floating turbines.
