Resource assessment of large marine current turbine arrays

At present, simple analytical and numerical models exist that give approximations for the energy that can be extracted by marine current turbine arrays (MCTAs) from an available resource. This paper first presents an analysis of different methods for conducting a resource assessment to outline the considerations that must be made whilst also identifying areas where more detail is required. Resource assessment using 2-D depth averaged numerical modelling software Telemac-2D is presented to give analysis of the behaviour of the flow in the presence of MCTAs and the effects of array density and seabed roughness on wake length and power generation.