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 Technologykhaas@gatech.edu11/3/2011

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

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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

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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