Four Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (ADCPs) have been deployed in tidal energy sites at Raz Blanchard, an eight-mile strait that runs between Alderney and La Hague in France, as part of the TIGER project.
The ADCPs have been deployed by French marine services providers DynamOcean and Ship as a Service as part of €45.4 million TIGER project which aims to develop, test and demonstrate tidal stream technologies at selected tidal sites across the UK and France.
The ADCP is a device that uses sound waves to measure the speed and direction of currents throughout the water column which can be used to gather data for the evaluation of placement of tidal turbines at a particular site.
Three ADCP frames were deployed across the site being developed by Normandie Hydrolienne – a joint venture created by SIMEC Atlantis and its partners with the aim of developing 12MW tidal energy project at Raz Blanchard, which could eventually be expanded to up to 2GW.
The fourth ADCP was deployed for French tidal energy company HydroQuest, which plans to develop a 17.5MW tidal energy project in the area , according to a social media update by Fraser Johnson, O&M manager for SIMEC Atlantis.
The project is expected to feature seven next-gen HydroQuest’s turbines , each rated at 2.5MW, as reported earlier by Offshore Energy.
The four ADCP frames will remain on site collecting flow and wave data until March 2022, after which the units will be recovered and the data post processed by oceanographers at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), which supplied the frames, before it is distributed among the TIGER project partners.
The data will be used by the projects academic partners to increase the accuracy of mathematical flow models which will further refine forecast models for the capacity of tidal energy production across the Raz Blanchard region.
The data will also be used by the project industrial partners to refine design values for current flow, turbulence and wave interactions on the turbine blades and structure, according to TIGER project.
Led by the UK’s Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult, TIGER project comprises 19 partners from across the UK and France spanning turbine developers, ocean energy demonstration sites, research organisations, as well local and regional authorities.
The project will work to accelerate the growth of tidal stream energy by installing up to 8MW of new tidal capacity at sites in and around the English Channel region, thus driving innovation and the development of new products and services.