Data Sources

The data employed for this study was taken from a multitude of sources covering the policy and technical aspects of the project. This data was initially used in the programming of the GIS tool used to produce the various maps covering Scotland as a whole and the selected sites. Further to this, various data sets employed for use in determining the tidal ranges and derived power approximations. The phasing tool developed for the project also collates this data in its operations to determine the best site combinations.

     

    Technical Data Sources

    Data from the Nautical Almanac , Tidal Admiralty Charts (NP 209 and NP 218) and information from the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL) were used to calculate many of the numerical values for tidal ranges, velocities and peak flows for neap and spring tides. Sea depths were also derived from these sources. Additional information was taken from various port locations across Scotland to establish tidal ranges in these exact localities. The 2011 tidal times for a number of ports actoss Scotland can be found here in .pdf format. This data was compiled by for use in this project and is available to download in Excel file format.

    It was found during the project that the quality of some of the data varied from source to source, in particular the data from the Tidal Admiralty Charts could only give tidal velocity for very large areas and the data from the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory could only give average spring and neap velocities (m/s) for a year. One recommendation to make this easier for consultants in the future would be to develop a centralised tidal current database similar to the data banks they have on the wind around the UK. The Scottish Government arm Marine Scotland are beginning to bring together information on marine energy and hopefully this will be made available to the general public in order to speed up the process of analysing locations for tidal energy.