Investigation of the novel challenges of an integrated offshore multi-purpose platform

《中国制造2025》报告强调，海洋可再生能源技术是中英两国企业的十大机遇领域之一。《国家海洋经济发展规划纲要》的具体目标是发展新的海洋养殖方法，提高生产力，同时更符合社会和环境要求。在欧盟，“蓝色增长”计划旨在促进海洋和海事部门的可持续增长，该计划已创造540万个就业岗位，每年创造5000亿欧元的总增加值。海上建筑非常昂贵。综合（例如）可再生能源设备和水产养殖设施的多用途平台（MPP）的主要思想是找到协同效应，以分担制造、安装、操作和维护以及退役成本。这有可能节省资金，减少总体影响，并最大限度地提高社会经济效益。MPP的发展带来了跨学科的挑战，因为它们同时旨在实现几个可能相互冲突的目标：技术经济上可行，环境上考虑，社会上有益，并与海事立法兼容。在欧盟，以前的研究集中在多兆瓦MPP（海洋可再生设备+水产养殖系统）的农场上，很少或没有尝试调查适合岛屿/沿海社区的低额定电力系统。在中国，以前针对岛屿社区的项目侧重于可再生能源，但它们没有纳入任何水产养殖要素。因此，对岛屿社区来说，出现了新的基本问题，特别是在技术经济可行性和在完全不同的规模上评价和最大化社会环境利益方面，但仍然需要一种全系统、跨学科的办法。建议的解决方案是调查这些不同的海上技术整合所带来的具体挑战，并采用多学科方法来解决这些挑战，确保考虑到所有方面（技术，经济，社会，环境，法律）。可再生能源技术(哪种风力涡轮机？哪个波装置？将确定最适合岛屿社区需要的哪种太阳能板？)和水产养殖系统，并将确定“跨学科”问题，例如：“可再生能源设备产生的噪音对（紧挨着的）水产养殖物种的增长率有什么影响？”回答这些问题，新的贡献将包括制定评估MPP系统可行性的方法，重点是：全球MPP对海洋条件的动态响应，整体综合控制和动力管理战略，环境影响，社会经济风险和效益。然后将通过两个案例研究来展示这些方法的潜力，一个集中在中国的一个岛屿社区，另一个集中在英国。该联盟汇集了来自三所中国和三所英国大学和研究所的国际知名专家，共20名研究人员，研究领域包括太阳能和海上风能和波浪能，可再生能源设备控制系统，可再生能源和水产养殖系统的环境和社会经济影响，水产养殖和综合多营养水产养殖发展，以及生态系统建模。这些研究人员也是研究界的主要成员，直接参与：中国科学院可再生能源重点实验室、IEC和中国海洋能源装置国家标准化委员会、Supergen Wind Hub、欧盟能源研究联盟JP Wind、ITTC海洋工程委员会、英国皇家造船学会海事创新委员会、ICES wg海洋哺乳动物生态学、生物多样性与生态系统国际平台、生态联盟顾问委员会。

The Made in China 2025 report, highlights ocean renewable energy technologies as one of the 10 areas of opportunity for UK and Chinese companies. The "Outline of the National Marine Economic Development Plan" specifically targets the development of novel ocean farming methods, more productive but also more socially and environmentally compatible. In the EU, the "Blue Growth" program aims at sustainable growth in the marine and maritime sectors, already representing 5.4 million jobs and generating a gross added value of 500 billion euros a year. Offshore structures are very costly. The main idea of a Multi-Purpose Platform (MPP), integrating (for example) renewable energy devices and aquaculture facilities, is to find the synergies to share manufacturing, installation, operation and maintenance, and decommissioning costs.This has the potential to, save money, reduce the overall impact, and maximize the socio-economic benefits.MPP development poses cross-disciplinary challenges, since they simultaneously aim to achieve several potentially conflicting objectives: to be techno-economically feasible, environmentally considered, socially beneficial, and compatible with maritime legislations. In the EU, previous research focused on farms of multi-megawatt MPP (ocean renewable devices + aquaculture systems), with very few/no attempts to investigate lower rated power systems suitable for island/coastal communities. In China, previous projects aimed at island communities focused on renewable energy, but they did not integrate any aquaculture elements.Therefore, for island communities, novel fundamental questions arise, especially in terms of techno-economic feasibility and assessment and maximization of socio-environmental benefits at a completely different scale, but still requiring a whole-system, cross-disciplinary approach.The proposed solution is to investigate which are the specific challenges arising from the integration of these different offshore technologies, and with a multi-disciplinary approach to tackle them, making sure that all the dimensions (technological, economic, social, environmental, legal) are taken into account.The renewable energy technologies (Which wind turbine? Which wave device? What kind of solar panel?) and aquaculture systems most suitable for the needs of an island community will be identified, and the "cross-disciplinary" questions will be defined, e.g. "What is the impact of the noise generated by the renewable energy devices on the (closely co-located) aquaculture species growth rate?".Answering these questions, the novel contribution will consist in developing approaches to assess the feasibility of an MPP system, focusing on: global MPP dynamic response to metocean conditions, overall integrated control and power management strategies, environmental impact, socio-economic risks and benefits.The potential of these methodologies will be then show-cased through two case-studies, one focusing on an island community in China, and one in the UK.This consortium brings together internationally recognised experts from three Chinese and three British universities and institutes, for a total of 20 investigators, in the fields of solar and offshore wind and wave energy, control systems for renewable energy devices, environmental and socio-economic impact of renewables and aquaculture systems, aquaculture and integrated multi-trophic aquaculture development, and ecosystem modelling. These investigators are also leading members of the research community, directly involved in: Renewable Energy Key Lab of Chinese Academy of Sciences, IEC and Chinese National Standardization Committee for Marine Energy Devices, Supergen Wind Hub, EU Energy Research Alliance JP Wind, ITTC Ocean Engineering Committee, the Royal Institution of Naval Architects Maritime Innovation Committee, ICES WG-Marine Mammal Ecology, International Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem, Ecopath Consortium Advisory Board.