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Water Power Peer Review

Acoustic Effects of Hydrokinetic Tidal

Turbines

Dr. Brian Polagye

University of Washington, NNMREC

bpolagye@uw.edu

November 1, 2011

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Purpose, Objectives, & Integration

Determine the likely acoustic effects from a tidal energy

project

understand potential harm to marine life Ambient noise (context for turbine noise)

Sound from turbines (at various device scales)

Marine species presence (space and time variation)

Effect of sound on marine species (injury and behavioral changes)

All data collected over course of project in public

domain (NNMREC website)

Industry, university, and laboratory involvement

Snohomish PUD: Craig Collar and Jessica Spahr

University of Washington: Brian Polagye, Jim Thomson, Chris Bassett

(NSF graduate research fellow), Joe Graber

SMRU, Ltd: Dom Tollit and Jason Wood

PNNL: Andrea Copping and Tom Carlson

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Technical Approach

Monitoring Biological and Physical Characteristcs

Infrared detection (land-based)

AIS Tracking

(land-based)

Sea Spider

(bottom-mounted)

Marine mammalecholocation

detectors

Ambient noiserecorder

Fish tag receiver

Doppler profiler

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Technical Approach

Sound from Tidal Turbines

Limited measurements from

OpenHydro turbine at EMEC

Apply first-order scaling rules for

arrays of larger turbines Focus on post-installation

characterization of turbine noise

Omnidirectional sound propagationtest

Demonstrate characterizationmethodology for TRL 7/8 projects

Necessary to place turbine noise

in context of ambient noise OpenHydro turbine noise measurements(Scottish Association of Marine Sciences )

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Technical Approach

Effects of Turbine Noise

Literature review of effects on

marine species from percussive and

continuous noise

Laboratory experiments expandingknowledge base (juvenile salmon)

Exposure to simulated turbine noise inanechoic tank

Measured hearing response to identify

onset of threshold shift Necropsies to identify tissue damage

Proxy study: effect of ferry noise on

harbor porpoise

Ferry noise frequency distribution

similar to turbine

Top: Fish undergoing an Auditory Evoked Potential (AEP)

Hearing test. Bottom: Electrophysiological response

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Plan, Schedule, & Budget

Schedule

Initiation date: September 30, 2009 (under contract March 26, 2010) Planned completion date: December 31, 2011 Fabrication and deployment of Sea Spiders (August 2010) Sound propagation field study (August 2011) Laboratory hearing/exposure experiment (March June 2011) Presentation of results (e.g., webinars, conferences) (2010-2011)

Budget Two additional Sea Spider deployments (increased supplies) 85% of DOE funds costed (September 2011)

Budget HistoryFY2009 FY2010 FY2011

DOE Cost-share DOE Cost-share DOE Cost-share

$0 $0 $213k $26k $291k $26k

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Accomplishments and Results

Context is Crucial for Interpreting Acoustic Effects

Ambient noise will also complicate post-installation measurements

Estimated effect of turbine operationon ambient noise

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Accomplishments and Results

Maximum Ambient Noise is Vessel Dominated

Vessel density (vessel-minutes) inproject area

Cumulative probability distributions ofbroadband received levels

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Accomplishments and Results

Marine Mammal Response is Site-Specific

No apparent avoidance to

exposure at 140 dB (broadband)

Indicator of noise habituation

N = 16

R2= 0.1, F= 5.5, p= 0.02

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Challenges to Date

OpenHydro turbine noise measurements(Scottish Association of Marine Sciences )

Acoustic Source

Limited measurements

difficult toquantify turbine noise

Focus on testing methods tocharacterize turbine noise post-install

Measurements

Flow noise and self noise affectmeasurements when currents > 1 m/s

Development of compact flow shieldfor stationary measurements anddrifting hydrophone approach

Species effects

Cannot experiment directly on marinemammals

Opportunistic proxy studies

Surrogate laboratory experiments

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Next Steps

Project Completion

Summary report describing techniques andlessons learned

Analysis of source propagation data

Publications: vessel noise, harbor porpoisepresence, proxy study of noise effects

Future Work

Better analytical tools for scaling noise estimates

from measurementsSimple tools for pre-installation estimates

emphasize measuring noise at pilot-scale

Scale-updesign trade-offs for quieter turbines