Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult and Frazer-Nash Consultancy have created an open source tool designed to asses and reduce tidal energy project risks.
The tool, with associated guidance documents, helps to identify key uncertainties in wave and tidal energy, according to Frazer-Nash.
They provide a standardised approach to assessing and reducing uncertainty, and allow projects to be compared on a like-for-like basis.
ORE Catapult and Frazer-Nash will do a live demonstration of their open source tool at the workshop during the International Tidal Energy Summit (ITES) in London in November 2015.
The workshop will present the state of the art in uncertainty assessment and demonstrate an open source tool that has been developed by ORE Catapult and Frazer-Nash, in collaboration with industry and academia.
Neil Adams , Group Leader at Frazer-Nash, said: “Tidal energy has a significant role to play in supplying future global energy needs, and we believe that this workshop will help developers, researchers and financiers to overcome some of the stumbling blocks that can stop them moving forward with projects.”
Ralph Torr , Engineering Manager at ORE Catapult, added: “This project is another great example of the collaborative approach ORE Catapult is taking to help understand and lower risks associated with the first commercial tidal energy arrays. Such collaborative activities are vital to ensuring the tidal industry as a whole maximises the value of both research and commercial activities to date, and over the coming years.”
The three guidance documents and the uncertainty management tool can be accessed on ORE Catapult’s website .
ORE Catapult is the UK’s technology innovation and research centre for offshore wind, wave and tidal energy.
Frazer-Nash Consultancy provides multidisciplinary engineering and technical services to government and industry worldwide.
Image: ORE Catapult/Illustration