Enhancing system resilience and security with tidal stream energy

This research investigates the impacts of tidal stream in enhancing energy system security and resilience, when installed alongside solar PV and wind. Energy security is defined as ‘the uninterrupted process of securing the amount of energy that is needed to sustain people’s lives and daily activities while ensuring its affordability’. Energy resilience is defined as’the ability of a system to survive strong and unexpected disruptions and to recover quickly afterwards’. As demonstrated in this paper, wind-droughts are common occurrences that present potentially significant risks to energy security/resilience. The Energy System Model for Remote Communities (EnerSyM-RC) is adopted to build on previous research of the Isle of Wight energy system. Energy system modelling is based on resource, demand and electricity price data from 2021, when a known wind-drought, and rising electricity prices, were observed. The study also considers 2022 electricity supply, when prices demonstrated significant volatility. Results show that the inclusion of tidal stream capacity alongside solar and wind enhances supply-demand balancing to reduce annual reliance on imported electricity by 30%, relative to cases systems that install solar PV and offshore wind only. The inclusion of tidal stream reduces the electricity import cost by over 60% in months with low wind and high electricity prices.