Study of the effect of tidal generation on the Irish grid system: Resource and Emissions

摘要

Transmission system operators recognise that there is a limit to the amount of wind generation that can penetrate the weakly interconnected Irish system. So tidal generation has been studied as a viable additional form of generation that could complement wind generation on the island of Ireland to increase the renewable generation on the system. Tidal generation is variable in output, peaking four times a day and has the advantage of being predictable long before the time of dispatch. Ireland was found to have a resource in the order of 72 MW on average, peaking at 374 MW. However, this resource may increase as the technology scales up and areas of lower energy density become viable to exploit. It was found that as tidal generation displaced different marginal plants on the system at different times of the day, it provided a significant reduction in CO{sub}2 emissions, with smaller decreases in NO{sub}x and SO{sub}2, depending on the precise plant loading.