Abstract
The sea area east of Chenshan Cape has peak tidal current flows that exceed 2.3 m s−1, which make it a promising site for the development of tidal current energy. Before these resources can be exploited, a comprehensive assessment is needed of the potential environmental impacts of the extraction of this energy. In this paper, we describe our construction of a three-dimensional hydrodynamic model of the waters near Chengshan Cape, and verify the performance of the model using continuous data measured in situ. We modeled the potential impacts of the exploitation of these resources on the flow field by adding a momentum loss term in the governing equation of the model. Simulation results show that an assumed tidal farm with an estimated power output of 20.34 MW would have a significant impact on the surrounding water level, especially next to the farm, where fluctuation could reach 6 cm. The maximum drop in the flow velocity in the wake of the farm was predicted to be more than 0.8 m s−1, and this influence would extend 10 km downstream.