The Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) and HR Wallingford unveiled a tidal energy modeling tool for use by tidal energy developers to identify the most efficient sites for tidal energy converters, tidal arrays, or tidal barrage schemes around the UK and French coastlines. The program, SMARTtide, incorporates a 2D hydrodynamic model of the UK’s continental shelf and the northwest European coastline. The tool calculates how energy extraction at one site may affect the energy available elsewhere, and identifies how interactions between different sites around the UK combine to form an overall effect and considers what constraints these interactions will place on the design, development and location of future energy systems. The software will be available to the public as a fee-for-service via a portal on HR Wallingford’s website.
