PhD Flow Interactions of Tidal Stream Energy: Understanding how large tidal farms will affect each other

Project description

As tidal stream energy scales up to national grid-scale significance, interactions between large tidal arrays may become increasingly important. Energy extraction at one location will affect flow – and therefore both energy yield and environmental impacts – for tidal farms in other parts of the same region, e.g. in parallel channels. An introduction to the potential effects, and their implications.

This project will take a numerical modelling approach to answer two initial questions:

1. How does flow diversion caused by tidal arrays affect nearby channels – and other tidal arrays in those channels – and how does this depend on channel geometry?
2. Are these inter-array effects significant enough to influence planning, yield prediction, and environmental assessment in realistic deployment scenarios?

Further research will be guided by the answers to these initial questions, and depending on the PGR’s interests could include aspects of,

• Further technical investigation of inter-array effects
• Improvements in the state of the art for simulation of tidal energy extraction
• Aspects of policy and governance: how could regulators and developers optimise a region with multiple large tidal farms owned by different companies?

The results of the project are expected to contribute to reducing tidal energy development costs and environmental impacts.

Introductions will be made to industry stakeholders, including tidal developers and the European Marine Energy Centre, for advice on realistic deployments and as networking opportunities for the successful candidate.

Candidate profile and development

We seek a postgraduate researcher with an interest in marine renewable energy and a background in renewable energy, physical oceanography, physical geography, applied maths, coastal engineering or other relevant discipline. Experience with numerical modelling is desirable but not required. A strong existing IT aptitude would be an advantage, as would experience with any of Python, MATLAB, or the linux command line.

The successful candidate will become an expert in tidal energy and regional-scale hydrodynamic modelling. Access will be available to the university’s High-Performance Computing cluster. Training will be offered in best practices for reproducible computational research.

The project will be based at Heriot-Watt’s Orkney campus – a centre for the marine energy sector. Splitting of time between Orkney and the Edinburgh campus will be considered on request.

Application Deadline

The closing date for applications is 28 November. We expect interviews to take place in December 2025. Applicants should ideally be available to start in January 2026 but must be available to start by May 2026 at the latest.

References

Waldman, S., Weir, S., O’Hara Murray, R.B., Woolf, D.K., Kerr, S., 2019.
Future policy implications of tidal energy array interactions. Marine Policy 108.

Waldman, S., Yamaguchi, S., O’Hara Murray, R., Woolf, D., 2017.
Tidal resource and interactions between multiple channels in the Goto Islands, Japan.
International Journal of Marine Energy 19, 332–344.

Draper, S., Adcock, T.A.A., Borthwick, A.G.L., Houlsby, G.T., 2014.
Estimate of the tidal stream power resource of the Pentland Firth.
Renewable Energy 63, 650–657.