A report by University of Southampton to the OES-IA under the Annex II Guidelines for Development and Testing of Ocean Energy Systems August 2008. (OES-IA Document nº T02 sk T02-2.2)
This document describes a Protocol to manage the development of tidal-current energy devices, from concept formulation to full-scale demonstration. The Protocol, commissioned by The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR), in September 2007, was developed by the Sustainable Energy Research Group (SERG) at the School of Civil Engineering and the Environment in the University of Southampton.
The overall aim of this Protocol is to assist in cost-effective management of research and development of tidal-current power technology, while allowing device developers to benefit from the confidence generated by using commonly accepted measures of performance.
A draft Protocol for consultation was disseminated in June 2008, followed by a workshop held at BERR in July 2008. The Protocol was then comprehensively revised into the version presented here, taking into account the comments received from industry and academia.
Details of the thinking behind the Protocol, along with supporting data, are included in two separate companion reports which are part of the SERG scientific report series (www.energy.soton.ac.uk). The first report developed the background for establishing the Protocol and is entitled, “Formulation of the Tidal-current Energy Device Development and Evaluation Protocol” (Bahaj et al.,2008a). The second companion report contains a set of adaptable templates for reporting compliance with the Protocol, along with supplementary information and is entitled, “Model templates for reporting and supplementary information for the Tidal-current Energy Device Development and Evaluation Protocol” (Bahaj et al., 2008b).
The Protocol is part of BERR's contribution to the International Energy Agency Implementing Agreement on
Ocean Energy Systems (IEA-OES) and will form the deliverable of the UK-led Task 2.2 of the IEA-OES Annex II Extension.
