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/X005003/1
• 负责人: Sarah Wakelin
• 金额: $ 20.25万
• 依托单位: NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHY CENTRE
• 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%2FX005003%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COP 26上强调了英国转向净零排放的必要性，英国能源安全也明显需要。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，Crown Estate ScotWind在北海北方拍卖了9,000平方公里的海域，有可能提供近25吉瓦的海上风电。其他地方也计划进行进一步的开发，例如，凯尔特海的300兆瓦Gwynt Glas海上风电场。这些发展标志着离岸风力发电的转变，从浅的，混合良好的沿海沃茨到更深的，季节性分层的陆架海。欧洲大陆架西北部的大部分地区经历季节性的热分层。这种每年形成的温跃层将温暖的表层水与寒冷的深层水分隔开来，是生物生产力的基础。春季的层化促使作为海洋食物链基础的微小浮游植物大量生长。在夏季，表层的营养物质被剥夺，初级生产在温跃层内的一层中继续，弱湍流混合从深层水提供营养物质，并向下混合氧气和有机物质。潮汐流产生紊流;湍流的强度控制了春季水华的时间、温跃层处的混合以及秋季/冬季水的再混合的时间。确定混合和分层之间的相互作用是理解陆架海生物生产是如何支持的基础。大型浮动风力涡轮机阵列现在被部署在季节性分层的海洋的大面积区域。这些结构将注入额外的湍流到水中，因为潮汐流移动通过和过去。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，更多的氧气可以供应到深水中。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造成的整套影响，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，以确定潮汐通过农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，并跟踪混合的下游影响，因为水远离风电场，浮游植物对新的营养物质供应做出反应。我们将使用自动滑翔机观察一年中分层部分的上游和下游分层和生物学的对比。我们将使用我们的观察来制定西北欧洲大陆架的计算机模型中的额外混合，这样我们就可以使用该模型来预测未来几十年计划的可再生能源开发可能会如何影响我们的大陆架海洋，以及这些影响如何有助于应对我们预期的气候变暖中的一些变化。分层对于我们的海洋如何支持生物生产至关重要，我们将开发一种新的，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，可以沿着位于风电场和海岸之间的海底电缆进行温度测量。我们的愿景是，风电场的大规模推广将导致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（对气候变化的环境响应）和英国气象局的业务科学家（约束模型以进行更好的预测）。