Funding (ca. £3m) has been secured from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), Scottish Government, Scottish Funding Council, Scottish Enterprise and ETP Member Universities to establish a Knowledge Exchange (KE) Network. This will catalyse and accelerate KE activity between academia and SMEs, thereby increasing innovation, advancing the development of the low carbon economy in Scotland and supporting Scotland, UK and the EU to meet ambitious 2020 low carbon targets.
This project is a collaboration between SuperGen Marine, the Exeter Centre for Water Resources (Non-SuperGen), Penn State University, Aquascientific Ltd., The Danish Hydraulics Research Institute and is mentored by Garrad Hassan partners. The primary goal is the introduction of a new hybrid optimisation approach that allows the multi-objective optimal design of the layout and power loadings of marine energy farms subject to environmental impacts. It involves a new, academically highly challenging integrated analytic/numerical/experimental, approach to optimising the performance of large tidal stream energy capture farms. The specific application focus involves tidal turbines suited to operating in shallow medium flow estuaries but the technique can be applied to all types of marine energy farms. Optimisation is subject to minimising flood risk, with further environmental impacts, such as sediment transport driven outcomes, being capable of subsequent incorporation as slow timescale effects. The work complements the PERAWAT project and has key partners in common.
Practical marine energy resources are subject to social and ecological constraints, such as conflict with other users of the sea and environmental protection. This research aims to contribute to a greater understanding of the practical constraints on marine energy developments, the extent to which they may limit the amount of power available for extraction and, most importantly, how energy production may be optimised within the limits set by these constraints.
Ignazio Maria Viola is Professor of Fluid Mechanics and Bioinspired Engineering at the School of Engineering of the University of Edinburgh; Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University; and Fellow of the Royal Institution of
