Tidal flows around Portland Bill headland. Colour scale is in m/s and vectors show direction and relative magnitude of the velocity field. Rectangle shows the approximate area with highest average flow speed (actually highest mean cube speed) View Portland Bill amination.
Portland Bill on the South coast of the UK (view in maps.live.com) is a promising site for tidal stream energy, with high tidal stream velocities of up to seven knots (3.6 m/s) around the headland. Although the area with high tidal streams is smaller than other proposed sites in Scotland or the Channel Islands, the location is closer to population centres than these sites.
In order to produce high resolution data on tidal streams, independent of navigational charts, a 2D tidal hydrodynamic model of this promising site has been produced using the TELEMAC system. The model was forced by tidal elevations around the outer boundary and the results validated using tidal elevation records at Weymouth (within the model domain) and tidal diamonds from the relevant Admiralty charts. Some of the results of the model can be seen in Figure and the associated animation of tidal flows around the headland.
Work has been published in:
Blunden L.S. and Bahaj A.S. (2006) Initial evaluation of tidal stream energy resources at Portland Bill, UK. Renewable Energy, Volume 31, Issue 2, February 2006, pp 121-132. view paper