Modelling the eco-hydraulic impacts of tidal energy projects

英国在法律上承诺到2050年将温室气体排放量减少80%，到2020年可再生能源占能源总量的15%。研究表明，潮汐流和范围电力计划的联合运行可以超过英国能源需求的12%，来自可持续的绿色能源。与其他可再生资源相比，它具有完全的可预测性，这意味着潮汐在满足国家能源需求方面可以发挥至关重要的作用。在撰写本提案时，潮汐流和基于范围的能源发电的试点项目正处于英国规划和开发的高级阶段。第一批安装在苏格兰Pentland Firth试点阵列中的潮汐流涡轮机刚刚开始发电（2016年12月7日），下一阶段（项目Stroma）于2016年12月15日确认。对于潮差，英国政府于2017年2月10日发布的“亨得利审查”建议潮汐泻湖（潮差结构）可以在英国的能源结构中发挥重要作用。这为斯旺西湾泻湖的发展提供了路线图，这是世界上第一个这种类型的潮差能源结构，可能在2018年开始建设，随后还有更大的项目。因此，我们正处于发展以潮汐为基础的新型可再生能源领域的关键阶段，英国目前在这方面处于世界领先地位。本项目旨在通过及时提供关于新的、更大的潮汐开发的生态影响的研究，以支持利益相关者的决策，包括沿海工程师、金融家、政策制定者和主要关注环境影响的人，以此巩固这一强有力的地位。该项目建立在伦敦帝国理工学院最近工作的坚实基础之上，该工作提供了在多尺度模型中表示涡轮机阵列和潮汐差结构的计算方法的初步演示，以及阵列设计和潮汐厂操作的优化，以最大化功率或利润，同时最大限度地减少环境影响。重要的是，这种优化与潜在的潮汐动态完全耦合，因此阵列设计和泻湖操作的变化可以反馈给资源，反之亦然。大型潮汐能项目的一个主要障碍是与环境过程有关的不确定性，如沉积、水质和鱼类洄游。特别是，与涡轮机接触造成的鱼类死亡一直是一个有争议的问题，开发商和环境机构都不得不考虑和缓解这个问题。这个项目力求发展一种考虑到河口和沿海地区鱼类洄游路线的新方法。它将结合帝国理工学院开发的最先进的区域尺度海洋模型，以及在CEFAS渔业和水产养殖专家的支持下开发的路线和优化算法。最终的目标是将开发的工具应用于考虑中的几个现实世界的地点：布里斯托尔海峡的潮汐泻湖和Pentland Firth的潮汐流阵列。这些案例研究提供了一个机会，可以对第一批试点计划的设计产生直接影响，并提供了一条途径，可以通过更全面的生态影响评估来支持更大型项目的成功开发。因此，该项目将提供高影响力的成果，以加强英国在国际能源界的领先地位（学术和商业）。申请人和更广泛的帝国集团（以及一般的学术界）将受益于开源Thetis框架内新的生态系统/渔业建模能力。CEFAS将受益于接触和培训最先进的数值模拟工具，这些工具具有模拟潮差和潮汐流海岸基础设施发展的灵活性。

The UK, is legally committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 and to meeting 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. Research suggests that the combined operation of tidal stream and range power schemes can exceed 12% of the UK's energy demand from a sustainable, green energy source. In comparison with other renewable resources this comes with complete predictability which means that tidal can play a vital role in meeting the nation's energy needs. At the time of writing this proposal, pilot projects for tidal stream and range based energy generation are in the advanced stages of planning and development within the UK. The first tidal stream turbines installed within a pilot array in the Pentland Firth off of Scotland have just started to generate power (7 Dec 2016), with the next phase (project Stroma) confirmed on 15 Dec 2016. For tidal range, the UK Government's "Hendry review", released on the 10th of Feb 2017, recommended that tidal lagoons (tidal range structures) can play an important role in the UK's energy mix. This provides a roadmap towards the development of the Swansea Bay lagoon, the first tidal range energy structure of this type worldwide where construction could commence in 2018, with much larger projects to follow.We are thus at a crucial stage in the development of a new tidal-based renewable energy sector where the UK currently leads the world. This project seeks to build on this strong position by providing timely research on the ecological impacts of new, larger tidal developments in a manner that supports decision making by stakeholders, including coastal engineers, financiers, policy-makers and primarily those concerned with environmental impacts. This project builds upon a strong foundation of recent work at Imperial College London that has provided the preliminary demonstration of computational methods for the representation of turbine arrays and tidal range structures within multi-scale models, as well as the optimisation of array designs and tidal plant operations to maximise power or profit, while minimising environmental impacts. Importantly this optimisation is fully coupled to the underlying tidal dynamics, so that changes to the array design and lagoon operation can feed back to the resource and vice-versa.A major hurdle for large tidal energy projects is the uncertainty associated with environmental processes such as sedimentation, water quality and fish migration. In particular, fish mortality caused by encounters with turbines has consistently been a controversial issue that developers and environmental agencies alike have had to consider and mitigate. This project seeks to develop a new methodology that considers fish migration routes in estuarine and coastal areas. It will combine state-of-the-art regional scale ocean models developed at Imperial College with routing and optimisation algorithms developed with the support of experts in fisheries and aquaculture from CEFAS.Ultimately the objective is to apply the developed tools to several real-world sites under consideration: tidal lagoons in the Bristol Channel and tidal stream arrays in the Pentland Firth. These case studies offer the opportunity to provide immediate impact on the design of the first pilot schemes, and a route to support the successful development of larger projects using a more comprehensive ecological impact assessment. This project will therefore provide high impact outcomes to strengthen the UK's leading (academic and commercial) position within the international energy community.The applicant and the wider Imperial group (as well as the academic community in general) will benefit from new ecosystem/fisheries modelling capabilities within the open source Thetis framework. CEFAS will benefit from exposure to, and training on, state-of-the-art numerical modelling tools which have the flexibility to simulate both tidal range and tidal stream coastal infrastructure developments.