CoTide - Co-design to deliver Scalable Tidal Stream Energy

0f1fc47a-524a-4039-a19a-073d17cc7196

Active

EPSRC
EPSRC
EPSRC
EPSRC
EPSRC

£36,815,210

June 30, 2023

June 30, 2028

The development of tidal stream energy presents a significant opportunity for the UK with a power generation potential in excess of 6GW nationally, and greater than 150GW globally. Delivering on net-zero and climate change objectives will require development and exploitation of all renewable energy resources to provide a robust and secure energy supply. The predictability of the tidal resource is a key benefit that can substantially contribute to resilient energy networks and complement less predictable renewable energy sources, e.g. wind, wave and solar. The UK currently leads tidal stream technology and science development, and there is significant opportunity to ensure global leadership of this exciting emerging sustainable energy sector.

To date, the largest tidal device installed is 2MW and the largest array of devices is 6MW in Orkney and Pentland Firth respectively. Device technologies, marine infrastructure, deployment, and operational strategies have all been refined through industrial research, design and deployment at testing sites, assisted by university partnerships. The challenge now faced by the industry is to understand how to deliver tidal stream energy at a scale that will make a meaningful energy contribution. The solution hinges on the ability to deliver reliable, sustainable, scalable and affordable engineering solutions. The engineering challenge is complex and multi-faceted, and the importance of and sensitivity to design drivers are not always well understood.

CoTide's research vision is to develop and demonstrate holistic integrated tools and design processes for tidal stream energy that will significantly reduce costs by removing unnecessary redundancy and improving confidence in engineering solutions, providing the transformative engineering processes and designs that will enable tidal energy to make a significant contribution to achieving climate change objectives by 2030-40.

CoTide brings together three major university multi-disciplinary teams, each with deep world-leading expertise across the major engineering disciplines essential for the design of tidal stream devices. These include device hydrodynamics, composites and rotor materials, structures and reliability, metocean resource and environmental modelling, system control and optimisation. The constituent engineering design capabilities will be integrated towards addressing the big questions facing tidal stream energy developers through a unified control co-design process. Through this holistic approach, CoTide will not only develop the framework to assess the impact of design drivers and design decisions but will contribute fundamental understanding of unsteady rotor loads and means to control and resist these, how to use contemporary and emerging manufacturing methods to benefit cost and through-life reliability in addition to maximising the potential of digitalisation for optimal performance.

With input from its Independent Advisory Board, the Programme resources will be periodically reviewed, adapted and refocused to concentrate on the research challenges that emerge from our research, the tidal energy sector and policy space, and that offer the best opportunities to support industry cost reduction pathways. As CoTide evolves, in addition to its core skills, the partners have a significant breadth of additional expertise to draw upon, with world leading capabilities in complementary areas within offshore renewable energy.

CoTide is an ambitious but realistic programme that has the scale, academic gravitas, and resource to achieve innovation through addressing transformative design questions. Through its co-design framework, considering the full scope of interconnected engineering challenges and environmental factors, it will deliver the understanding, tools and data to support the progressive and step change reductions in cost and uncertainty needed to deliver scalable, sustainable and affordable tidal stream energy.