1 | Program Name or Ancillary Text eere.energy.gov
Water Power Peer Review
Assessment of Energy Production Potential from Tidal Streams in the United States
Kevin A. Haas
Georgia Institute of [email protected]/3/2011
2 | Wind and Water Power Program eere.energy.gov
Purpose, Objectives, & Integration
Challenges and knowledge gaps addressed:– Provide a full spatial-temporal assessment of tidal
currents for the U.S. coastline– A national database of tidal stream energy potential that
is publicly available – Interactive Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools
for users to assess the scale and the nature of tidal stream power
Relation to program’s mission and objectives:– Promote development of tidal current energy technology
and accelerate the market
3 | Wind and Water Power Program eere.energy.gov
Technical Approach
Methodology:– Tidal currents are numerically modeled with the Regional
Ocean Modeling System (ROMS)– Calibrated with the available measurements from NOAA– Independent validation by ORNL– Create a national database of tidal constituents and
descriptive statistics – Build GIS servers to disseminate the data– Provide GIS tools – Compute the total theoretical power
4 | Wind and Water Power Program eere.energy.gov
Technical Approach
Key issues:– Spatial-temporal distributionNumerical modeling for better spatial coverage
Extract tidal constituents for predicting tidal stream velocities
5 | Wind and Water Power Program eere.energy.gov
Technical Approach
Key issues:– Data accessibility
Provide an easy to access, user friendly interface for industry
– Facilitate resource investigationProvide basic tools for industry to facilitate preliminary assessment
of the tidal stream power resource– Identify resources at a location and generate plots on the fly
– Download data for further analysis
– Filter for depth, tidal current speed and tidal stream power density
– Total available powerWhat is the total available power on a national scale?
6 | Wind and Water Power Program eere.energy.gov
Plan, Schedule, & Budget
Schedule• Initiation date: 15 September 2008• Completion date: 31 March 2011
Budget: $469,500 Expended: $469,492.85
Budget History
FY2009 FY2010 FY2011
DOE Cost-share DOE Cost-share DOE Cost-share
$107,343 $217,777 $144,104
7 | Wind and Water Power Program eere.energy.gov
Accomplishments and Results
Accomplishments:
Project completed. Available at
http://www.tidalstreampower.gatech.edu/
8 | Wind and Water Power Program eere.energy.gov
Accomplishments and Results
9 | Wind and Water Power Program eere.energy.gov
Accomplishments and Results
10 | Wind and Water Power Program eere.energy.gov
Accomplishments and Results
11 | Wind and Water Power Program eere.energy.gov
Accomplishments and Results
Goals accomplished:– Provide a full spatial-temporal assessment of tidal
currents for the U.S. coastline– A national database of tidal stream energy potential that
is publicly available – Interactive Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools
for users to assess the scale and the nature of tidal stream power
– Promote development of tidal current energy technology
12 | Wind and Water Power Program eere.energy.gov
Challenges to Date
Challenges faced:
1. Resolving the 3-D structure of the flow (i.e. vertical profile) for a project at national scale
2. Correct assessment of the total available power
3. Dissemination of data during peak demand
Approaches to resolve challenges:
1. Modeling with Barotropic assumption
2. Garrett and Cummins (2005) formula used to estimate the total available power
3. Additional server and separating the services to meet the peak demand
13 | Wind and Water Power Program eere.energy.gov
Next Steps
Suggestions for future research:– Project is a preliminary assessment of the resources at a
national level– More detailed modeling for regions of higher energy,
possibly including 3-D structure (i.e. depth variation)– Need for measurement data preferably with durations
long enough to derive tidal constituents accurately at energetic locations
– Develop more accurate methods for calculating the total power for regions with high energy
– Additional geographical information can be integrated to the database