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TIDAL FLOW |
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Energy Availability A study by Black & Veatch for the Carbon Trust has reported that: B&V identified a key parameter, the Significant Impact Factor (SIF), to describe the amount of energy that is extractable from a site without significant environmental or economic impacts. This should be determined for sites individually, but to allow a preliminary estimate of the total UK technically extractable resource, a SIF of 20% was assumed. UK tidal stream resources. Drawing on a combination of previous resource studies and new calculations, B&V found that the UK tidal stream resource appears to be about half the entire European resource, and is probably 10 to 15% of the known world resource. The UK technically extractable tidal stream resource is ~18 TWh/year ± 30 %, which is roughly 5% of current UK electricity demand. This is the amount of energy that could be extracted without significant environmental or economic impacts. After application of site-specific SIFs. Approximately half of this resource lies at deep water (>40m depth) sites with a mean spring peak velocity, Vmsp, greater than 3.5 m/s. About one fifth is at sites of depth 30m to 40m and Vmsp between 2.5 m/s and 4.5 m/s. The key outcomes of this exercise are predictions of future costs-of-energy for tidal stream farms, with consideration of optimisation and scaling effects for particular site conditions. These have been linked to the UK resource breakdown to estimate the quantities of generation capacity that could be installed in future and at what cost. This is reflected in the new UK resource-cost curves given in the report. Notably, these curves indicate that the cost of tidal stream generation could become competitive by developing UK sites. A further important conclusion is an estimate of the economically extractable UK resource, which is distinguished from the technically extractable resource by the cost-of-energy. This is 12 TWh/year, approximately 3% of UK electricity demand. Considering the carbon saving this represents together with the potential opportunity of exporting generation technology (recalling that the UK resource is approximately 10% to 15% of the world resource), it appears the UK could obtain both environmental and economic benefits from tidal stream energy. Further information available from the Carbon Trust here: Background information about marine energy |
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