Coastal shelf model of northern european waters to inform tidal power industry decisions: SMARTtide

Renewable energy extraction from tidal range and/or tidal current technologies in a particular area will affect the hydrodynamics of the local tidal system differently, impacting the tidal resource at the particular site. There may also be a regional effect on the hydrodynamics, affecting other tidal energy extraction schemes' resource and potential energy yield. The impact of large-scale and/or widespread tidal energy extraction on the tidal energy resource is therefore important to understand in order to inform optimisation and management of the UK tidal resource. The present paper discusses a new tool that has been developed to provide capabilities for pre-feasibility assessments of energy extraction. The tool is called SMARTtide and is based on the 2D module of the open source TELEMAC system, a finite element shallow water solver. The underlying northern European shelf model behind SMARTtide was commissioned and funded by the Energy Technologies Institute with the overall aim to assess interactions of tidal power energy extraction around the UK. Black & Veatch, HR Wallingford and the University of Edinburgh completed the project. The SMARTtide model comes with various levels of resolution available, including: • the detailed continental shelf model (DCSM), with 200m resolution at the coast and sites of interest; and • the coarse continental shelf model (CCSM), with 1km resolution at the coast and sites of interest. Depending on the energy extraction scenario envisaged, simulation for a representative 15-day spring-neap tidal cycle takes on average less than 2hr for the detailed model and less than 1hr for the coarser model on a supercomputer (nine 12-core processors and one 12-core processor, respectively), which can be seamlessly accessed via a webinterface.