Siting tidal energy projects through resource characterization and environmental considerations
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The development of tidal energy technologies has progressed to where devices can be deployed, operated, maintained, and recovered with some level of assurance that they will and produce adequate levels of power. Equally important to further the tidal energy industry is the ability to site and gain regulatory permission to deploy and operate these devices. This paper sets out a framework for reaching preliminary siting of tidal devices, drawing from case studies from three locations in the US where research studies have provided information in support of tidal deployments. Through the TEAMER funding opportunity in the US, tidal energy device and project developers were able to engage US Department of Energy national laboratory scientists and engineers to provide technical assistance for investigating potential tidal deployment sites within US waters. The bodies of water of interest had already been determined by the proponents at the start of the project and constraints and opportunities within those bodies of water were examined to optimize siting capabilities for the developers. Using numerical models and field observations, we characterized tidal resources at a scale that will allow for optimization of energy extraction. We examined the natural and human infrastructure constraints for deploying and operating tidal devices and arrays including channel widths, bathymetry, vessel traffic, ferry lanes, and grid interconnects, in order to narrow siting options. We also examined the biological resources in the water bodies of interest, with a focus on populations of endangered marine mammals and fish, and the critical habitats that support them. The biological resources were then related to the applicable regulatory requirements in place in US for federal and state statutes in areas where the tidal applicants wish to deploy. Based on these analyses, preferred deployment locations were delineated and processes for meeting regulatory requirements laid out, including post-installation monitoring plans that will be needed. This initial assessment of logistical, regulatory, and environmental conditions for the deployment of a tidal technology is a first step toward the achievement of regulatory compliance for tidal energy projects. Three locations were considered for tidal energy development in the US. The first one included the area around an archipelago of islands in the northern portion of Washington State, near the US-Canada border, with the intent of installing one or more floating tidal devices to add energy resilience and independence for the single utility that services the isolated islands. The second location was in the coastal waters of Maine where tidal power would be added to the local electrical grid. The third location was in Cook Inlet, Alaska, where the applicant seeks to deploy multiple floating tidal devices to provide renewable energy in place of conventionally generated power for the city of Anchorage.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.012 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".