Enabling Sustainable Wind Energy Expansion in Seasonally Stratified Seas (eSWEETS3)

实现季节性分层海洋的可持续风能扩张 (eSWEETS3)

• 批准号: NE/X004295/1
• 负责人: Deborah Greaves
• 金额: $ 14.95万
• 依托单位: Plymouth University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FX004295%2F1
• 关键词: Enabling; Sustainable; Wind; Energy; Expansion

The need for the UK to shift to NetZero was highlighted at COP26 in Glasgow, and there is a clear need for UK energy security. UK policy to achieving these is based on massive expansion of off-shore wind. In 2022 Crown Estate Scotland "ScotWind" auctioned 9,000 km2 of sea space in the northern North Sea, with potential to provide almost 25 GW of offshore wind. Further developments are planned elsewhere, for example, the 300 MW Gwynt Glas Offshore Wind Farm in the Celtic Sea. These developments mark a shift in off-shore wind generation, away from shallow, well mixed coastal waters to deeper, seasonally stratified shelf seas This shift offers both challenges and opportunities which this proposal will explore. Large areas of the NW European shelf undergo seasonal thermal stratification. This annual development of a thermocline, separating warm surface water from cold deep water, is fundamental to biological productivity. Spring stratification drives a bloom of growth of the microscopic phytoplankton that are the base of marine food chains. During summer the surface layer is denuded of nutrients and primary production continues in a layer inside the thermocline, where weak turbulent mixing supplies nutrients from the deeper water and mixes oxygen and organic material downward. Tidal flows generate turbulence; the strength of turbulence controls the timing of the spring bloom, mixing at the thermocline, and the timing of remixing of the water in autumn/winter. Determining the interplay between mixing and stratification is fundamental to understanding how shelf sea biological production is supported.Arrays of large, floating wind turbines are now being deployed over large areas of seasonally-stratifying seas. These structures will inject extra turbulence into the water, as tidal flows move through and past them. This extra turbulence will alter the balance between mixing and stratification: spring stratification and the bloom could occur later, biological growth inside the thermocline could be increased, and more oxygen could be supplied into the deep water. There could be significant benefits of this extra mixing, but we need to understand the whole suite of effects caused by this mixing to aid large-scale roll-out of deep-water renewable energy.eSWEETS will conduct observations at an existing floating wind farm in the NW North Sea to determine how the extra mixing generated by tides passing through the farm affect the physics, biology and chemistry of the water. We will measure the mixing of nutrients, organic material and oxygen within the farm, and track the down-stream impacts of the mixing as the water moves away from the wind farm and the phytoplankton respond to the new supply of nutrients. We will use autonomous gliders to observe the up-stream and down-stream contrasts in stratification and biology all the way through the stratified part of the year. We will use our observations to formulate the extra mixing in a computer model of the NW European shelf, so that we can then use the model to predict how planned renewable energy developments over the next decades might affect our shelf seas and how those effects might help counter some of the changes we expect in a warming climate.Stratification is so fundamental to how our seas support biological production that we will develop a new, cost-effective way of monitoring it. We will work with the renewables industry and modellers at the UK Met Office on a technique that allows temperature measurements to be made along the power cables that lie on the seabed between wind farms and the coast. Our vision is that large-scale roll-out of windfarms will lead to the ability to measure stratification across the entire shelf. This monitoring will help the industry (knowledge of operating conditions), government regulators (environment responses to climate change) and to operational scientists at the UK Met Office (constraining models for better predictions).

英国在格拉斯哥的COP26强调了英国转移到Netzero的需求，这显然需要英国能源安全。英国实现这一目标的政策是基于大量扩大离岸风。 2022年，苏格兰皇冠庄园“苏格兰”拍卖在北海北部的9,000公里海上空间，有可能提供近25吉瓦的海上风。在其他地方计划进一步发展，例如，凯尔特海的300兆瓦Gwynt Glas Offshore Wind Find。这些事态发展标志着离岸风的转变，从浅层，混合的沿海水域转向更深的，季节性分层的货架海洋，这种转变既提供了挑战和机遇，又将探索这一提议的挑战和机遇。西北欧洲货架的大面积经历季节性热分层。热跃层的每年发展，将温暖的地表水与冷水区分开，是生物生产力的基础。春季分层驱动着是海洋食品链的基础的微观浮游植物的生长。在夏季，表面层剥夺了养分的剥夺，而一级产生在热跃层内部的层中继续，在该层中，弱的湍流混合供应从更深的水中提供营养，并将氧气和有机材料向下搅拌。潮流产生湍流；湍流的强度控制着春季盛开的时机，在热层上混合，以及在秋季/冬季混合水的时机。确定混合与分层之间的相互作用是了解如何支持货架海生物生产的基础。随着潮流流过并经过它们，这些结构将向水注入额外的湍流。这种额外的湍流将改变混合与分层之间的平衡：春季分层和开花可能会在以后发生，热层内的生物学生长可以增加，并且可以将更多的氧气供应到深水中。这种额外的混合可能会有很大的好处，但是我们需要了解这种混合所引起的整体效果，以帮助大规模推出深水可再生能源。播放将在北海NW北海现有的浮动风场进行观察，以确定通过潮汐通过农场产生的额外混合，影响物理，生物学，生物学和化学。我们将测量农场内营养素，有机材料和氧气的混合，并在水从风电场移开时跟踪混合的下游影响，而浮游植物对新的养分供应做出了反应。我们将使用自主滑翔机观察整个分层部分的分层和生物学的上游和下游对比度。我们将利用观察结果在NW欧洲货架的计算机模型中制定额外的混合，以便我们可以使用该模型来预测未来几十年中计划的可再生能源发展如何影响我们的货架海域，以及这些影响可能有助于对抗温暖的气候中的某些变化。在温暖的气候中，我们对我们的生产如此重要，我们将为您提供新的生产。我们将与英国大都会办公室的可再生能源行业和建模者合作采用一种技术，该技术允许沿风电场和海岸之间海床的电源电缆进行温度测量。我们的视野是，大规模的风力推出将导致测量整个架子上分层的能力。这种监控将有助于行业（经营状况的知识），政府监管机构（环境对气候变化的反应）以及对英国大都会办公室的运营科学家（限制了更好的预测模型）。