Skip to main content
Intended for healthcare professionals
Restricted access
Research article
First published online July 24, 2014

Tidal stream power in the Pentland Firth – long-term variability, multiple constituents and capacity factor

Thomas AA Adcock [email protected], Scott Draper, Guy T Houlsby, Alistair GL Borthwick, and Sena SerhadlıoğluView all authors and affiliations
Volume 228, Issue 8
https://doi.org/10.1177/0957650914544347

Abstract

The Pentland Firth, Scotland, is one of the World’s prime locations for the eventual installation of large farms of tidal stream turbines. This paper seeks to improve the upper bound estimate of available power output obtained by Adcock et al. (2013) who used a depth-integrated numerical model of the region containing the Pentland Firth with the outer boundary forced solely by M2 and S2 tidal constituents. Herein, the analysis is extended to include six additional tidal constituents and the model run for 11.5 years, more than half of the 18.6-year lunar nodal cycle, to allow variations over this to be analysed. The consequent increase in available power is estimated, and the variation in power output over an 11-year period is examined. Although further power could theoretically be extracted from the additional six tidal constituents, this would require the tidal turbine farm to have such a low capacity factor that it would probably be economically unfeasible.

Get full access to this article

View all access and purchase options for this article.

Get Access

References

1. Adcock TAA, Draper S, Houlsby GT, et al. The available power from tidal stream turbines in the Pentland Firth. Proc R Soc A: Math, Phys Eng Sci 2013; 469: 20130072–20130072.
Crossref
Google Scholar
2. Carballo R, Iglesias G, Castro A. Numerical model evaluation of tidal stream energy resources in the Ra de Muros (NW Spain). Renew Energy 2009; 34: 1517–1524.
Crossref
Google Scholar
3. Ahmadian R, Falconer R, Bockelmann-Evans B. Far-field modelling of the hydro-environmental impact of tidal stream turbines. Renew Energy 2012; 38: 107–116.
Crossref
Google Scholar
4. Kubatko EJ, Westerink JJ, Dawson C. hp Discontinuous Galerkin methods for advection dominated problems in shallow water flow. Comput Methods Appl Mech Eng 2006; 196: 437–451.
Crossref
Google Scholar
5. Kubatko EJ, Bunya S, Dawson C, et al. A performance comparison of continuous and discontinuous finite element shallow water models. J Sci Comput 2009; 40: 315–339.
Crossref
Google Scholar
6. Draper S, Houlsby GT, Oldfield MLG, et al. Modelling tidal energy extraction in a depth-averaged coastal domain. IET Renew Power Gen 2010; 4: 545–554.
Crossref
Google Scholar
7. Draper S, Stallard T, Stansby P, et al. Laboratory scale experiments and preliminary modelling to investigate basin scale tidal stream energy extraction. In: 10th European wave and tidal energy conference (EWTEC), Aalborg, Denmark, 2–5 September 2013.
Google Scholar
8. Houlsby GT, Draper S and Oldfield M. Application of linear momentum actuator disc theory to open channel flow. Technical report 2296-08, 2008. University of Oxford.
Google Scholar
9. Serhadlıoğlu S, Houlsby GT, Adcock TAA, et al. Assessment of tidal stream energy resources in the UK using a discontinuous Galerkin finite element scheme. In: FEF, San Diego, California, 24–27 February 2013.
Google Scholar
10. Serhadlıoğlu S, Adcock TAA, Houlsby GT, et al. Tidal stream energy resource assessment of the Anglesey Skerries. Int J Mar Energy 2013; 34: e98–e111.
Crossref
Google Scholar
11. Adcock TAA and Draper S. On the tidal stream resource of two headland sites in the English Channel: Portland Bill and Isle of Wight. In: 33rd international conference on ocean, offshore and arctic engineering, San Francisco, California, 8–13 June 2014, paper no. 23032.
Google Scholar
12. Draper S, Adcock TAA, Houlsby GT, et al. The extractable power from the Pentland Firth. Renew Energy 2014; 63: 650–657.
Crossref
Google Scholar
13. Draper S, Adcock TAA, Houlsby GT, et al. An electrical analogy for the Pentland Firth tidal stream power resource. Proc R Soc A: Math, Phys Eng Sci 2014; 470: 20130207–20130207.
Crossref
Google Scholar
14. Vennell R. Tuning turbines in a tidal channel. J Fluid Mech 2010; 663: 253–267.
Crossref
ISI
Google Scholar
15. Adcock TAA, Draper S. Power extraction from tidal channels – multiple tidal constituents, compound tides and overtides. Renew Energy 2014; 21: 797–806.
Crossref
Google Scholar
16. Egbert GD, Ray RD. Semi-diurnal and diurnal tidal dissipation from topex/poseidon altimetry. Geophys Res Lett 2003; 30(17): 9–9.
Crossref
Google Scholar
17. Parker BB, Davies AM, Xing J Tidal height and current prediction. In: CNK Mooers (ed). Coastal ocean prediction, American geophysical union, USA: Wiley, 1999, pp. 277–328.
Crossref
Google Scholar
18. Garrett C, Cummins P. The power potential of tidal currents in channels. Proc R Soc A: Math, Phys Eng Sci 2005; 461: 2563–2572.
Crossref
Google Scholar
19. Adcock TAA and Draper S. Different metrics for the analysis of candidate site for tidal stream energy. In: 1st PRIMARE conference, Plymouth, UK, 4–5 June 2014.
Google Scholar
20. Stock-Williams C, Parkinson S and Gunn K. An investigation of uncertainty in yield prediction for tidal current farms. In: 10th European wave and tidal energy conference (EWTEC), Aalborg, Denmark, 2013.
Google Scholar
21. Adcock TAA. On the Garrett and Cummins limit. In: Oxford tidal energy workshop, Oxford, UK, 29–30 March 2012.
Google Scholar
22. Vennell R, Adcock TAA. Energy storage inherent in large tidal turbine farms. Proc R Soc A: Math, Phys and Eng Sci 2014; 470: 20130580–20130580.
Crossref
PubMed
Google Scholar

Cite article

Cite article

Cite article

OR

Download to reference manager

If you have citation software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice

Share options

Share

Share this article

Share with email
EMAIL ARTICLE LINK

Share access to this article

Sharing links are not relevant where the article is open access and not available if you do not have a subscription.

For more information view the Sage Journals article sharing page.

Information, rights and permissions

Information

Published In

Volume 228, Issue 8
Pages: 854 - 861
Article first published online: July 24, 2014
Issue published: December 2014

Keywords

  1. Pentland Firth
  2. available power
  3. power potential
  4. capacity factor
  5. 18.6-year lunar nodal cycle

Rights and permissions

© IMechE 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav.
Request permissions for this article.

History

Manuscript received: February 21, 2014
Manuscript accepted: June 23, 2014
Published online: July 24, 2014
Issue published: December 2014

Authors

Affiliations

Thomas AA Adcock
Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
[email protected]
View all articles by this author
Scott Draper
Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
View all articles by this author
Guy T Houlsby
Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
View all articles by this author
Alistair GL Borthwick
Institute of Energy Systems, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
View all articles by this author
Sena Serhadlıoğlu
Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
View all articles by this author

Notes

Thomas AA Adcock, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PJ, UK. Email: [email protected]

Metrics and citations

Metrics

Journals metrics

This article was published in Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part A: Journal of Power and Energy.

VIEW ALL JOURNAL METRICS

Article usage*

Total views and downloads: 227

*Article usage tracking started in December 2016

Articles citing this one

Web of Science: 16 view articles Opens in new tab

Crossref: 14

  1. Potential and prospects of hydrokinetic energy in Malaysia: A review
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  2. The Fluid Mechanics of Tidal Stream Energy Conversion
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  3. Sensitivity assessment of bathymetry and choice of tidal constituents ...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  4. Modification of tidal resonance in the Severn Estuary by a barrage and...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  5. The effect of bed roughness uncertainty on tidal stream power estimate...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  6. Prospects for Tidal Stream Energy in the UK and South America: A Revie...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  7. Tidal stream turbine power capping in a head-driven tidal channel
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  8. Combined power and thrust capping in the design of tidal turbine farms
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  9. The influence of waves on morphodynamic impacts of energy extraction a...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  10. Assessment of the Malaysian tidal stream energy resource using an uppe...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  11. The wave and tidal resource of Scotland
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  12. Power available from a depth-averaged simulation of a tidal turbine ar...
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  13. The power available to tidal turbines in an open channel flow
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar
  14. Hydrokinetic Tidal Energy Resource Assessments Using Numerical Models
    Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar

Figures and tables

Figures & Media

Tables

View Options

Get access

Access options

If you have access to journal content via a personal subscription, university, library, employer or society, select from the options below:

Alternatively, view purchase options below:

Purchase 24 hour online access to view and download content.

Subscribe to this journal

Access journal content via a DeepDyve subscription or find out more about this option.

Start 2 week free trial
Need help?

View options

PDF/ePub

View PDF/ePub

Full Text

View Full Text
View full textDownload PDF

Also from Sage