Tidal energy operational and spatial planning optimisation

英国承诺到2050年将温室气体排放量在1990年的基础上减少80%，到2020年实现15%的能源来自可再生能源。研究表明，潮汐流和范围电力计划的联合运行可以超过英国能源需求的12%，这是一种可持续的清洁能源。与其他可再生能源相比，它具有完全的可预测性，这意味着潮汐可以在满足国家能源需求方面发挥至关重要的作用。在撰写本提案时，潮汐流和基于范围的能源发电的试点项目正处于英国规划和开发的高级阶段。第一批安装在苏格兰彭特兰湾试点阵列中的潮汐流涡轮机刚刚开始发电。对于基于潮差的技术，英国政府于2017年2月10日发布的“亨德利审查”建议潮汐泻湖（潮差结构）可以在英国的能源结构中发挥重要作用。这为斯旺西湾泻湖的开发提供了一个路线图，作为一个探路者项目，也是世界上第一个这种类型的潮差能源结构。建设可能在2018年开始，随后将有更大的工业项目。因此，我们正处于发展以潮汐为基础的新型可再生能源领域的关键阶段，英国目前在这方面处于世界领先地位。本项目旨在通过及时提供关于新的、更大的潮汐开发对环境和生态影响的研究，以支持利益相关者（包括沿海工程师、金融家和主要关注环境影响的人）的决策，以此巩固这一强有力的地位。该项目建立在伦敦帝国理工学院最近工作的坚实基础之上，该工作提供了在多尺度模型中表示涡轮机阵列和潮汐差结构的计算方法的初步演示，以及阵列设计和潮汐厂操作的优化，以最大化功率或利润，同时最大限度地减少环境影响。本文将重点研究未来潮差工程的空间优化规划和运行控制。最近的计算模型研究结果表明，在中试规模之外扩大海洋能源基础设施的开发规模是一项艰巨的挑战。工业建议需要全面评估和补偿对环境过程的影响，这些影响与敏感物种的水质和潮汐动力学变化有关。当对多个过程进行大规模模拟时，通过模拟软件对环境影响（例如潮汐冲刷、溶解氧）进行量化可能需要大量计算。减少计算负荷的机会可能源于这样一个事实，即许多环境约束可以描述为目标函数。所提出的优化将与潜在的潮汐动力学完全耦合，因此潮差结构设计和控制的变化可以反馈给水环境过程，反之亦然。这项研究将由学术界和工业界联合进行，并由海洋能源开发人员、技术顾问以及环境和沿海过程方面的专家提供资料。工业界的输入将以观测和模型数据的形式，与潮汐能优化软件的结果进行比较。这些数据还将告知优化方法的约束条件，并将用于验证相应的沿海模型，这些模型旨在评估一系列工业潮差能源建议的优化设计。这项研究的首要动机将是为环境影响评估实践和即将由英国工业界开发的清洁能源技术的可持续发展提供信息。

The UK, is committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by the year 2050 relative to 1990 levels, and to meeting 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. Research suggests that the combined operation of tidal stream and range power schemes can exceed 12% of the UK's energy demand from a sustainable, clean energy source. In comparison with other renewable energy sources this comes with complete predictability which means that tidal can play a vital role in meeting the nation's energy needs. At the time of writing this proposal, pilot projects for tidal stream and range based energy generation are in the advanced stages of planning and development within the UK. The first tidal stream turbines installed within a pilot array in the Pentland Firth off of Scotland have just started to generate power. For tidal range-based technologies, the UK Government's "Hendry review", released on the 10th of Feb 2017, recommended that tidal lagoons (tidal range structures) can play an important role in the UK's energy mix. This provides a roadmap towards the development of the Swansea Bay lagoon as a pathfinder project and the first tidal range energy structure of this type worldwide. Construction could commence in 2018, with much larger industrial projects to follow subsequently.We are thus at a crucial stage in the development of a new tidal-based renewable energy sector where the UK currently leads the world. This project seeks to build on this strong position by providing timely research on the environmental and ecological impacts of new, larger tidal developments in a manner that supports decision making by stakeholders, including coastal engineers, financiers, and primarily those concerned with environmental impacts. This project builds upon a strong foundation of recent work at Imperial College London that has provided the preliminary demonstration of computational methods for the representation of turbine arrays and tidal range structures within multi-scale models, as well as the optimisation of array designs and tidal plant operations to maximise power or profit, while minimising environmental impacts. The proposed research will focus on the optimal spatial planning and operational control of prospective tidal range projects. Recent computational modelling findings suggest that up-scaling the development of marine energy infrastructure beyond the pilot scale poses a formidable challenge. Industrial proposals need to comprehensively evaluate and compensate for impacts on environmental processes that relate to water quality for sensitive species and tidal dynamics alterations. A quantification of environmental impacts (e.g. tidal flushing, Dissolved Oxygen) via simulation software can become computationally demanding when multiple processes are modelled at a large scale. Opportunities to reduce the computational load could stem from the fact that many of the environmental constraints can be described as objective functions. The optimisation proposed will be fully coupled to the underlying tidal dynamics, so that changes to tidal range structure design and control can feed back to the hydro-environmental processes and vice-versa. The research will be conducted at the interface of academia and industry, and will be informed by marine energy developers, technical consultants and experts in environmental and coastal processes. Input from industry will be in the form of observed and model data that will be compared against the results of the tidal energy optimisation software. The data will also inform the optimisation method's constraints, and will be used to validate corresponding coastal models that aim to assess optimised designs of a series of industrial tidal range energy proposals. The overarching motivation of the research will be to inform environmental impact assessment practices and the sustainable development of upcoming clean energy technologies that will be developed by the UK's industry.