Enabling Sustainable Wind Energy Expansion in Seasonally Stratified Seas (eSWEETS3)

实现季节性分层海洋的可持续风能扩张 (eSWEETS3)

• 批准号: NE/X00418X/1
• 负责人: Justin Dix
• 金额: $ 39.98万
• 依托单位: University of Southampton
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FX00418X%2F1
• 关键词: Enabling; Sustainable; Wind; Energy; Expansion

The need for the UK to shift to NetZero was highlighted at COP26 in Glasgow, and there is a clear need for UK energy security. UK policy to achieving these is based on massive expansion of off-shore wind. In 2022 Crown Estate Scotland "ScotWind" auctioned 9,000 km2 of sea space in the northern North Sea, with potential to provide almost 25 GW of offshore wind. Further developments are planned elsewhere, for example, the 300 MW Gwynt Glas Offshore Wind Farm in the Celtic Sea. These developments mark a shift in off-shore wind generation, away from shallow, well mixed coastal waters to deeper, seasonally stratified shelf seas This shift offers both challenges and opportunities which this proposal will explore. Large areas of the NW European shelf undergo seasonal thermal stratification. This annual development of a thermocline, separating warm surface water from cold deep water, is fundamental to biological productivity. Spring stratification drives a bloom of growth of the microscopic phytoplankton that are the base of marine food chains. During summer the surface layer is denuded of nutrients and primary production continues in a layer inside the thermocline, where weak turbulent mixing supplies nutrients from the deeper water and mixes oxygen and organic material downward. Tidal flows generate turbulence; the strength of turbulence controls the timing of the spring bloom, mixing at the thermocline, and the timing of remixing of the water in autumn/winter. Determining the interplay between mixing and stratification is fundamental to understanding how shelf sea biological production is supported.Arrays of large, floating wind turbines are now being deployed over large areas of seasonally-stratifying seas. These structures will inject extra turbulence into the water, as tidal flows move through and past them. This extra turbulence will alter the balance between mixing and stratification: spring stratification and the bloom could occur later, biological growth inside the thermocline could be increased, and more oxygen could be supplied into the deep water. There could be significant benefits of this extra mixing, but we need to understand the whole suite of effects caused by this mixing to aid large-scale roll-out of deep-water renewable energy.eSWEETS3 will conduct observations at an existing floating wind farm in the NW North Sea to determine how the extra mixing generated by tides passing through the farm affect the physics, biology and chemistry of the water. We will measure the mixing of nutrients, organic material and oxygen within the farm, and track the down-stream impacts of the mixing as the water moves away from the wind farm and the phytoplankton respond to the new supply of nutrients. We will use autonomous gliders to observe the up-stream and down-stream contrasts in stratification and biology all the way through the stratified part of the year. We will use our observations to formulate the extra mixing in a computer model of the NW European shelf, so that we can then use the model to predict how planned renewable energy developments over the next decades might affect our shelf seas and how those effects might help counter some of the changes we expect in a warming climate.Stratification is so fundamental to how our seas support biological production that we will develop a new, cost-effective way of monitoring it. We will work with the renewables industry and modellers at the UK Met Office on a technique that allows temperature measurements to be made along the power cables that lie on the seabed between wind farms and the coast. Our vision is that large-scale roll-out of windfarms will lead to the ability to measure stratification across the entire shelf. This monitoring will help the industry (knowledge of operating conditions), government regulators (environment responses to climate change) and to operational scientists at the UK Met Office (constraining models for better predictions).

在格拉斯哥举行的COP26会议上，强调了英国转向NetZero的必要性，英国显然需要能源安全。英国实现这些目标的政策是基于海上风能的大规模扩张。2022年，苏格兰皇家地产“ScotWind”拍卖了北海北部9000平方公里的海域，有望提供近25千兆瓦的海上风能。其他地方也计划进一步开发，例如凯尔特海的300兆瓦格温特格拉斯离岸风电场。这些发展标志着离岸风力发电的转变，从浅水、混合良好的沿海水域转向更深的、季节性分层的陆架海。这一转变既提供了挑战，也提供了本提案将探索的机遇。欧洲西北部大陆架的大片区域经历了季节性的热层化。这种温跃层的年度发展，将温暖的地表水与寒冷的深水分开，是生物生产力的基础。春季层结推动了微小浮游植物的大量生长，浮游植物是海洋食物链的基础。在夏季，表层的营养物质被剥离，初级生产继续在温跃层内的一层中进行，那里微弱的湍流混合从更深的水中提供营养物质，并向下混合氧气和有机物质。潮汐流动产生湍流；湍流的强度控制着春季开花的时间，在温跃层混合，以及秋冬季水的重新混合的时间。确定混合和分层之间的相互作用是理解陆架海洋生物生产如何得到支持的基础。大型浮动风力涡轮机阵列现在正部署在季节性分层海洋的大片区域。当潮汐流穿过这些结构时，这些结构将向水中注入额外的湍流。这种额外的湍流将改变混合和层化之间的平衡：春季层化和水华可能会晚些时候发生，温跃层内的生物生长可能会增加，更多的氧气可以被供应到深水中。这种额外的混合可能会带来显著的好处，但我们需要了解这种混合所造成的一整套影响，以帮助大规模推出深水可再生能源。eSWEETS3将在北海西北部现有的一个浮动风力发电场进行观测，以确定通过该发电场的潮汐产生的额外混合如何影响水的物理、生物和化学。我们将测量养殖场内营养物质、有机物质和氧气的混合情况，并跟踪混合的下游影响，因为水从风力发电场移开，浮游植物对新的营养物质供应做出反应。我们将使用自主滑翔机在一年中的分层部分一直在分层和生物方面观察上游和下游的对比。我们将利用我们的观察结果，在西北部欧洲大陆架的计算机模型中形成额外的混合，这样我们就可以使用该模型来预测未来几十年计划中的可再生能源开发可能如何影响我们的陆架海洋，以及这些影响可能如何帮助应对气候变暖时我们预期的一些变化。分层对于我们的海洋如何支持生物生产是如此基础，以至于我们将开发一种新的、经济有效的方法来监测它。我们将与可再生能源行业和英国气象局的建模人员合作，开发一种技术，允许沿着位于风力发电场和海岸之间海床上的电缆进行温度测量。我们的愿景是，风电场的大规模铺设将导致能够测量整个大陆架的分层。这种监测将有助于行业(对运营状况的了解)、政府监管机构(环境对气候变化的反应)以及英国气象局的操作科学家(约束模型以获得更好的预测)。