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%，并在2020年前实现15%的能源来自可再生能源。研究表明，潮汐水流和范围发电计划的联合运行可以超过英国能源需求的12%，这些能源来自可持续的清洁能源。与其他可再生能源相比，这具有完全的可预测性，这意味着潮汐能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，基于潮流和范围的能源发电试点项目正处于英国国内规划和开发的后期阶段。首批安装在苏格兰彭特兰海湾试点阵列中的潮流涡轮机刚刚开始发电。对于基于潮汐范围的技术，英国政府于2017年2月10日发布的《亨德利评估报告》建议，潮汐泻湖(潮汐范围结构)可以在英国的能源组合中发挥重要作用。这为斯旺西湾泻湖作为探路者项目的发展提供了路线图，并提供了世界上第一个这种类型的潮差能量结构。建设可能在2018年开始，随后会有更大的工业项目。因此，我们正处于一个新的潮汐可再生能源领域发展的关键阶段，英国目前处于世界领先地位。该项目寻求在这一强大地位的基础上，及时对新的、更大的潮汐开发对环境和生态的影响进行研究，以支持利益攸关方的决策，包括沿海工程师、金融家，主要是那些关注环境影响的人。该项目建立在伦敦帝国理工学院最近工作的坚实基础上，该工作初步演示了在多比例模型中表示涡轮机阵列和潮差结构的计算方法，以及优化阵列设计和潮汐发电厂运营，以最大限度地提高功率或利润，同时将对环境的影响降至最低。拟开展的研究将集中于未来潮差工程的最优空间规划和运行控制。最近的计算模拟结果表明，将海洋能源基础设施的发展扩大到超过试点规模是一项艰巨的挑战。工业提案需要全面评估和补偿对环境过程的影响，这些影响涉及敏感物种的水质和潮汐动力变化。当大规模模拟多个过程时，通过模拟软件量化环境影响(例如潮汐冲刷、溶解氧)可能会变得需要计算。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被描述为目标函数。建议的优化将完全与潜在的潮汐动力学相结合，因此潮差结构设计和控制的变化可以反馈到水环境过程中，反之亦然。这项研究将在学术界和工业界之间进行，并将由海洋能源开发商、技术顾问和环境和沿海进程方面的专家提供信息。工业界的投入将以观测和模型数据的形式进行，这些数据将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限制条件，并将用于验证相应的海岸模型，这些模型旨在评估一系列工业潮差能源提案的优化设计。这项研究的主要动机将是为环境影响评估实践和即将由英国工业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.