Hydrodynamic modelling of offshore photovoltaic installations within an existing wind farm in the Belgian part of the North Sea

EcoMPV (Eco-designing Marine PhotoVoltaic installations) is a three years project (from October, 2022 to October, 2025) funded by the Belgian Energy transition fund. It will deepen the knowledge about environmental challenges related to offshore PV installations, aiming at technical solutions to mitigate undesired consequences and maximize beneficial impacts. Knowledge gaps will be addressed about (1) altered underwater light field, hydrodynamics, pelagic biogeochemistry and primary production, (2) the artificial habitat provision for colonizing fauna and fish, and (3) effects on carbon fluxes and sequestration. Advice for eco-designing offshore PV installations, paving the way to its environmental licensing, will be formulated in the framework of this project. Five partners are involved in this project: Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS), Ghent University (UGENT), Tractebel Engineering S.A. (Tractebel), Jan De Nul and Dredging International (DEME). Regarding the Task 1.1: hydrodynamic modelling, the goal is to estimate the impact of MPV units on key hydrodynamics model parameters using the 3D hydrodynamic model COHERENS (Luyten (2014)). In interaction with the industrial partners, various conceptual MPV farm designs will be defined (different designs, different number of MPV units, different distance between MPV units). Each farm design will be implemented in the 3D COHERENS hydrodynamic model and tested against various meteorological-ocean conditions (winter vs summer, spring tide vs neap tide, etc.). The results will be studied in order to quantify the near- and far-field hydrodynamic changes in the current velocity field, turbulence, average kinetic energy as well as on the bottom shear stress variation. Furthermore, such modelling of potential hydrological changes serves as the initial step for a more detailed biogeochemical impact study, which will then allow for a complete impact assessment.

Report

Confidential Deliverable in the framework of the EcoMPV project.