Comparison of twin-basin lagoon systems against conventional tidal power plant designs

Tidal power plant proposals present opportunities to deliver sustainable energy to the national grid in the UK and beyond. Multiple designs have been considered over the years that seek to competitively balance economic, environmental and technical challenges. Tidal range power plants have the advantage of reliable and predictable energy outputs with a certain degree of flexibility but typically feature non-generation periods in every tidal cycle. Twin-basin systems present an alternative that can significantly reduce this variability but very little information has been reported in terms of their performance to-date. In this work a coastal ocean modelling framework has been coupled with twin-basin and tidal power plant operation algorithms and is applied to compare tidal energy options. Results suggest that through use of a twin basin system the non-generation time can be substantially reduced at a notable expense to the overall energy output relative to conventional tidal lagoons and barrages.