TeraWatt: Large scale Interactive coupled 3D modelling for wave and tidal energy resource and environmental impact

Project Dates: 
June, 2012 to November, 2015
Project Summary: 

The TeraWatt project was a collaborative project between a consortium of Scottish Universities and Marine Scotland Science (MSS), under the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland (MASTS) pooling initiative. The overarching aim was to develop a suite of sophisticated computer models designed specifically to help understand the environmental consequences of wave end tidal energy extraction in Scotland. The research programme was designed to address some specific needs of MSS, namely in relation to quantifying the physical and environmental impact wave and tidal energy development.  Importantly, the models developed included tidal and wave energy extraction.  Mainly focussing on the Pentland Firth and Orkney Waters (Figure 1), the research was designed to answer fundamental questions about the wave and tidal energy resource and how it might change in response to wave and tidal energy extraction. The aim was also to provide insights into the physical and ecological consequences of wave and tidal energy extraction. The project was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) SUPERGEN (SUstainable PowER GENeration) “Marine Hub”, and ran from June 2012 until the end of November 2015.

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Completed Projects
Map showing the Pentland Firth and Orkney Waters Round One Development Sites, their nominal capacity, and the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) test sites. Modified from The Crown Estate (2013).
Description: 

Two major outputs from the project were:

  • A collection of position papers forming a toolbox of methods to better understand and asses the effects of tidal and wave energy arrays on the marine environment; and

  • A special issue of Ocean & Coastal Management, containing a collection of papers detailing the development of the models and the scientific outputs from the project.

MSS were responsible for compiling the data used by the TeraWatt project and R O’Hara Murray and A Gallego (2017) document these data.  This data collection is also listed here in the Tables below and where possible, links to where the data can be obtained are provided.

Links and Resources

Type Link Titlesort ascending External Link
Code Vertical Offshore Reference Frames www.ucl.ac.uk
Data Portals UKHO INSPIRE portal and MEDIN Bathymetry Data Archive Centre (Geospatial viewer and download) data.admiralty.co.uk
Data Portals UK Tide Gauge Network www.bodc.ac.uk
Tabular Data The ERA-40 archive www.ecmwf.int
Data Portals The Crown Estate - 20 m bathymetry www.thecrownestate.co.uk
Code OSU Tidal Prediction Software (OTPS) volkov.oce.orst.edu
Tabular Data Marine Scotland Vessel Mounted ADCP Data
Data Portals GSHHG - A Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Geography Database www.ngdc.noaa.gov
Tabular Data Gridded bathymetry (900 m) derived from Satellite Altimetry and Ship Depth Soundings gcmd.nasa.gov
Tabular Data Gardline ADCP Data www.gardline.com
Web link ESR - Arctic and Antarctic Barotropic Tide Models mail.esr.org
Organisations EMEC www.emec.org.uk
Data Portals Cefas WaveNet www.cefas.co.uk
Data Portals BODC Current Data www.bodc.ac.uk
Data Portals BGS - GeoIndex Offshore mapapps2.bgs.ac.uk
Type Titlesort ascending External link
Web link Tools for managing the development of the wave and tidal energy resource (TeraWatt) www.sciencedirect.com
Documents TeraWatt Position Papers www.masts.ac.uk