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/X004775/1
• 负责人: Tom Rippeth
• 金额: $ 64.15万
• 依托单位: Bangor University
• 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%2FX004775%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.eSWEETS 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).

在格拉斯哥举行的第26届联合国气候变化大会（COP26）上，英国向NetZero转型的必要性得到了强调，英国对能源安全的需求也很明显。英国实现这些目标的政策是基于海上风电的大规模扩张。2022年，苏格兰皇冠地产公司（Crown Estate Scotland）在北海北部拍卖了9000平方公里的海上空间，有望提供近25吉瓦的海上风电。其他地方也计划进一步开发，例如凯尔特海的300兆瓦Gwynt Glas海上风电场。这些发展标志着海上风力发电的转变，从浅水、混合良好的沿海水域转向更深的、季节性分层的大陆架海域。这种转变带来了挑战和机遇，本提案将探讨这些挑战和机遇。西北大陆架的大片地区经历季节性热分层。这种将温暖的地表水与寒冷的深水分开的温跃层的年度发展是生物生产力的基础。春季的分层推动了微小浮游植物的繁盛生长，它们是海洋食物链的基础。在夏季，表层的营养物质被剥落，初级生产在温跃层内的一层继续进行，在那里，微弱的湍流混合提供了深层水的营养物质，并向下混合了氧气和有机物质。潮汐流产生湍流；湍流的强度控制着春季开花的时间，在温跃层混合的时间，以及秋冬水再混合的时间。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是如何得到支持的基础。大型浮动风力涡轮机阵列现在被部署在季节性分层的大片海域上。当潮汐流过这些结构时，这些结构会给水中注入额外的湍流。这种额外的湍流将改变混合和分层之间的平衡：春季分层和水华可能会发生得更晚，温跃层内的生物生长可能会增加，更多的氧气可能会被供应到深水中。这种额外的混合可能会带来巨大的好处，但我们需要了解这种混合所带来的全套影响，以帮助大规模推广深水可再生能源。eSWEETS将在北海西北部现有的浮动风力发电场进行观测，以确定潮汐通过风力发电场产生的额外混合如何影响水的物理、生物和化学。我们将测量农场内营养物质、有机物质和氧气的混合情况，并跟踪水从风电场流出时混合对下游的影响，以及浮游植物对新的营养物质供应的反应。我们将使用自动滑翔机在一年中分层的部分一直观察上游和下游的分层和生物学对比。我们将利用我们的观测结果在欧洲西北部大陆架的计算机模型中制定额外的混合，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发展如何影响我们的大陆架海洋，以及这些影响如何有助于抵消我们预计的气候变暖的一些变化。分层对我们的海洋如何支持生物生产至关重要，因此我们将开发一种新的、具有成本效益的监测方法。我们将与可再生能源行业和英国气象局（UK Met Office）的建模人员合作，研究一种技术，该技术可以沿着位于风力发电场和海岸之间的海底电缆进行温度测量。我们的愿景是，大规模的风力发电场将带来测量整个大陆架分层的能力。这种监测将有助于行业（了解运行条件）、政府监管机构（对气候变化的环境反应）和英国气象局（UK Met Office）的业务科学家（约束模型以进行更好的预测）。