The Effect of Uncertainty on Tidal Stream Energy Resource Estimates

This thesis is focused on river and tidal stream power assessment, focussing particularly on uncertainties in power estimates resulting from inaccurate characterisation of bed roughness and turbine drag. It presents analytical and numerical models for the transfer of these uncertainties through to turbine power uncertainty in a strait, exploring how this affects metrics such as mean power and its standard deviation. Perturbation methods are used to determine the leading-order effects of friction and drag uncertainty in tidal stream power assessment.
The methods for uncertainty transfer presented in this thesis could readily be applied to numerous other problems encountered in hydraulic engineering, such as flow routing, urban flood risk, and reservoir sedimentation. It will therefore be of interest to researchers, engineers, and students in these fields.

Introduces three approaches for transferring uncertainty through physical models Gives insight in the underlying mechanisms within the modelled systems Utilises examples and applications to demonstrate the approaches explored

Autorentext

Dr Monika Johanna Kreitmair is a Research Associate in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. She received her MPhys from the University of Oxford in 2012, and her MSc and PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 2014 and 2019 respectively. She has published several research papers in journals and conference proceedings and has taught a number of undergraduate courses on engineering hydrology and hydrodynamics.

Klappentext

This thesis is focused on river and tidal stream power assessment, focussing particularly on uncertainties in power estimates resulting from inaccurate characterisation of bed roughness and turbine drag. It presents analytical and numerical models for the transfer of these uncertainties through to turbine power uncertainty in a strait, exploring how this affects metrics such as mean power and its standard deviation. Perturbation methods are used to determine the leading-order effects of friction and drag uncertainty in tidal stream power assessment. The methods for uncertainty transfer presented in this thesis could readily be applied to numerous other problems encountered in hydraulic engineering, such as flow routing, urban flood risk, and reservoir sedimentation. It will therefore be of interest to researchers, engineers, and students in these fields.

Inhalt

Introduction and Literature Review.- Derivation of the Shallow Water Equations.- Uncertain Power from a Hydro-Kinetic Turbine in Steady Flow.- Uncertainty in Background Fraction.- Uncertainty in Turbine Resistance.- Pentland Firth Study.- Conclusions and Recommendations