CoTide - Co-design to deliver Scalable Tidal Stream Energy

潮流能的发展为英国提供了一个巨大的机遇，全国发电潜力超过6GW，全球发电潜力超过150GW。实现净零和气候变化目标将需要开发和利用所有可再生能源，以提供强劲和安全的能源供应。潮汐资源的可预测性是一个关键的好处，可以大大促进有弹性的能源网络，并补充不可预测的可再生能源，如风能、波浪和太阳能。英国目前引领潮流技术和科学发展，有重大机会确保这一令人振奋的新兴可持续能源领域的全球领先地位。到目前为止，安装的最大潮汐装置为2兆瓦，最大的装置阵列分别位于奥克尼和彭特兰湾6兆瓦。在大学伙伴关系的协助下，通过工业研究、设计和在试验场的部署，设备技术、海洋基础设施、部署和操作战略都得到了完善。该行业目前面临的挑战是了解如何以能够做出有意义的能源贡献的规模输送潮汐水流能源。解决方案取决于提供可靠、可持续、可扩展和负担得起的工程解决方案的能力。工程挑战是复杂和多方面的，设计驱动因素的重要性和敏感性并不总是得到很好的理解。CoTide的研究愿景是开发和展示潮汐能的整体集成工具和设计流程，通过消除不必要的冗余和提高对工程解决方案的信心来显著降低成本，提供变革性的工程流程和设计，使潮汐能能够在2030-40年前为实现气候变化目标做出重大贡献。CoTide汇集了三个主要的大学多学科团队，每个团队都拥有对潮流设备设计至关重要的主要工程学科的深厚世界领先专业知识。这些领域包括设备流体动力学、复合材料和转子材料、结构和可靠性、海洋资源和环境建模、系统控制和优化。组成工程设计能力将通过一个统一的控制联合设计过程整合起来，以解决潮流能源开发商面临的重大问题。通过这种全面的方法，CoTide不仅将制定框架来评估设计驱动因素和设计决策的影响，而且将有助于从根本上了解不稳定的转子负载以及控制和抵制这些负载的方法，以及如何使用当代和新兴的制造方法来实现成本和全寿命可靠性，同时最大限度地发挥数字化实现最佳性能的潜力。在独立咨询委员会的投入下，方案资源将得到定期审查、调整和重新聚焦，以专注于我们的研究、潮汐能领域和政策空间出现的研究挑战，这些挑战提供了支持行业降低成本途径的最佳机会。随着CoTide的发展，除了其核心技能外，合作伙伴还拥有大量的额外专业知识可供借鉴，并在海上可再生能源的互补领域拥有世界领先的能力。CoTide是一个雄心勃勃但现实的项目，拥有通过解决变革性设计问题实现创新的规模、学术影响力和资源。通过其联合设计框架，考虑到相互关联的工程挑战和环境因素的全部范围，它将提供理解、工具和数据，以支持提供可扩展、可持续和负担得起的潮流能源所需的成本和不确定性的逐步和逐步变化。

The development of tidal stream energy presents a significant opportunity for the UK with a power generation potential in excess of 6GW nationally, and greater than 150GW globally. Delivering on net-zero and climate change objectives will require development and exploitation of all renewable energy resources to provide a robust and secure energy supply. The predictability of the tidal resource is a key benefit that can substantially contribute to resilient energy networks and complement less predictable renewable energy sources, e.g. wind, wave and solar. The UK currently leads tidal stream technology and science development, and there is significant opportunity to ensure global leadership of this exciting emerging sustainable energy sector.To date, the largest tidal device installed is 2MW and the largest array of devices is 6MW in Orkney and Pentland Firth respectively. Device technologies, marine infrastructure, deployment, and operational strategies have all been refined through industrial research, design and deployment at testing sites, assisted by university partnerships. The challenge now faced by the industry is to understand how to deliver tidal stream energy at a scale that will make a meaningful energy contribution. The solution hinges on the ability to deliver reliable, sustainable, scalable and affordable engineering solutions. The engineering challenge is complex and multi-faceted, and the importance of and sensitivity to design drivers are not always well understood.CoTide's research vision is to develop and demonstrate holistic integrated tools and design processes for tidal stream energy that will significantly reduce costs by removing unnecessary redundancy and improving confidence in engineering solutions, providing the transformative engineering processes and designs that will enable tidal energy to make a significant contribution to achieving climate change objectives by 2030-40.CoTide brings together three major university multi-disciplinary teams, each with deep world-leading expertise across the major engineering disciplines essential for the design of tidal stream devices. These include device hydrodynamics, composites and rotor materials, structures and reliability, metocean resource and environmental modelling, system control and optimisation. The constituent engineering design capabilities will be integrated towards addressing the big questions facing tidal stream energy developers through a unified control co-design process. Through this holistic approach, CoTide will not only develop the framework to assess the impact of design drivers and design decisions but will contribute fundamental understanding of unsteady rotor loads and means to control and resist these, how to use contemporary and emerging manufacturing methods to benefit cost and through-life reliability in addition to maximising the potential of digitalisation for optimal performance.With input from its Independent Advisory Board, the Programme resources will be periodically reviewed, adapted and refocused to concentrate on the research challenges that emerge from our research, the tidal energy sector and policy space, and that offer the best opportunities to support industry cost reduction pathways. As CoTide evolves, in addition to its core skills, the partners have a significant breadth of additional expertise to draw upon, with world leading capabilities in complementary areas within offshore renewable energy.CoTide is an ambitious but realistic programme that has the scale, academic gravitas, and resource to achieve innovation through addressing transformative design questions. Through its co-design framework, considering the full scope of interconnected engineering challenges and environmental factors, it will deliver the understanding, tools and data to support the progressive and step change reductions in cost and uncertainty needed to deliver scalable, sustainable and affordable tidal stream energy.