A review of tidal current energy resource assessment in China

Tidal current energy has received extensive attention from both academia and industry in the past decade due to its high power density and strong predictability. Besides Europe and the United States, China has also made tremendous efforts in tidal current energy development, as this abundant ocean renewable resource is expected to provide consistent and clean power for highly-populated coastal cities or remote islands. To evaluate the tidal current resource potential in China, both national assessments and regional investigations have been conducted with different methods and resolutions. However, these evaluation results have not been systematically collected, which are poorly informed to researchers, developers, and investors. At the same time, the conducted assessments sometimes show discrepancies, indicating the necessity of analysing data uncertainty and improving data quality. Under the circumstances, this work presents a review of tidal current resource assessment studies in China, and most existing evaluations for tidal current energy hotspots have been included, classified and compared. Particularly, these regions of interest are further categorised with their exploitability, based on not only theoretical energy reserve estimation, but also local conditions of bathymetry, transportation, policy, etc. According to the assessment results, Zhoushan Archipelago has been considered the most suitable area for large-scale tidal current energy development in China, and the waters nearby Chengshan Cape and Qiongzhou Strait are also with great potential. Furthermore, assessment result uncertainties are analysed, and suggestions on scientific research, technology innovation, and business investment are also proposed for future China tidal current energy development.