As one of the most significant clean, green, and stable promising resources of marine renewable energy, tidal stream energy has attracted extensive attention around the world for its development and utilization. Weihai is a city on the eastern coast of Shandong Province, China, which has a large amount of tidal stream energy resources. In this study, a two-dimensional mathematical model has been established on the open-source software TELEMAC to investigate tidal hydrodynamics and assess the potential of tidal stream energy in Weihai water. The simulation results including tidal elevation and tidal stream (velocity and direction) were validated with measured data, showing a reasonable agreement. Distributions of maximal and mean energy densities of tidal stream in the vicinity of Weihai water throughout one year are provided, and two possible sites for deploying tidal stream turbines are recommended.
According to Renewables 2020 (IEA, 2020), renewables are forecast to cover almost 65% of demand growth in China. Replacing traditional fossil energy with renewable energy is a feasible and effective measure to decrease environmental pollution. Many resources of renewable energy are available, including thermal, biomass, wind, tide, wave, and tidal stream etc. Covering 71% of our globe surface, the ocean is the largest energy source on the earth. Tidal stream energy is one of ocean energy and the capture mechanism principle is similar to wind power generation. Due to the most significance feature of clean, green, stable and great predictability, the tidal stream energy is receiving more and more recognition (Zhang et al., 2020).
China has an excellent resource of tidal stream energy with a huge capacity of approximate 8 GW (Liu et al., 2011). Weihai is a city on the eastern coast of Shandong Province, China (see Fig. 1). The local tidal range is small, with the annual mean tidal range being about 0.8 m. This sea area around Weihai water is experiencing regular semi-diurnal tide, and the flow direction is northeast to southwest. There is a large amount of tidal stream energy resources in Weihai water, where the water depth is moderate. The maximum stream velocity is more than 2 m/s, which indicates that it has a great potential for tidal stream energy development. Therefore, assessment of tidal stream energy in Weihai water is of great significance.
