Abstract
In the current search for cleaner, cheaper solutions to the ever-increasing demand for energy, one of the most promising and often overlooked sources is that of tidal current energy. With several governmentcommissioned studies having concluded that there exists a European potential resource in excess of 12.5 GW, this is a significant and untapped source of power. Although work is well underway to develop tidal turbines in order to exploit this source, there has been no detailed study of optimal layouts for tidal turbine “farms”. The paper presented here describes the application of Computational Fluid Dynamics techniques to this problem in the modelling of tidal turbine wakes. Results for both one turbine alone and two turbines positioned in tandem are included.