Coastal Shelf Model of Northern European waters to inform tidal power industry decisions

The Energy Technologies Institute has commissioned a Continental Shelf Model of Northern European waters. Its principal aims are to assess the tidal energy potential around the UK, to inform the design of energy harnessing schemes, to understand the interaction between different tidal range and tidal stream energy schemes, and to evaluate their impact on Northern European coasts. To that effect, coarse and detailed resolution versions of the model were developed. Considerable effort was invested in identifying, obtaining and analysing suitable data for the model calibration and validation exercise. Good agreement was achieved overall, and in particular against discrete observed velocity data at two high energy sites in the Irish Sea/North Channel. Computing time for a 15-day period is under 15 minutes on a 12-core desktop computer, and under 3 hours on a standard multi-core desktop computer for the coarser model. That for the detailed model is under 1.5 hours on an 8 x 12-core blade cluster. This allows simulations to be run efficiently and could open the way for parameter estimation and optimisation and ultimately for uncertainty analysis. This makes the Continental Shelf Model a suitable tool for the tidal power industry to predict future tidal energy scheme scenarios, and the interaction between different energy schemes.