Measuring waves and currents at the European marine energy centre tidal energy test site: Campaign specification, measurement methodologies and data exploitation

Improved understanding of the dynamics of tidal currents and ocean waves and the loads they impose on tidal turbines is a prerequisite for an economically viable tidal turbine industry. The dynamic environment effects machine design and reliability, has consequences on operations and maintenance and ultimately energy conversion rate. Over the course of a recently completed five year international collaborative project multiple, multi-instrument measurement campaigns were conducted to acquire information on the flow, and recently, the wave-field incident upon an operating commercial-scale tidal energy converter (TEC), the Alstom 1MW DEEPGEN IV. This article summarises the measurement campaign specification and methodology, introduces the project's technical reports and describes access to all of the acquired data. A new research project, FloWTurb: Response of Tidal Energy Converters to Combined Tidal Flow, Waves, and Turbulence has already incorporated “lessons-learned”, which are summarised, into upcoming field measurements in the Pentland Firth and has funded a significant re-analysis of these existing data sets beyond the original project’s scope. A selection of summarising results are introduced here, where the inclusion of ocean wave measurements and analysis allows the data to be exploited in new ways.