Four subsea frames supporting flow measurement devices, also known as Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (ADCP’s), have been successfully deployed on two tidal sites at Raz Blanchard in France as part of the Interreg France (Channel) England funded TIGER project.

The ADCP’s used in the operation were supplied by the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), and installation of the ADCPs was coordinated by Normandy Hydroliennes with support from HydroQuest, DynamOcean, AD Normandy and the University of Caen. The operation to install the four frames on the exposed rocky seabed was conducted by Ship As A Service.

The four ADCP frames will remain on site collecting flow and wave data until March 2022, after which the units and data will be recovered. The data will be processed by oceanographers at EMEC before being distributed among the TIGER project partners.

The data will be used by the projects academic partners to increase the accuracy of mathematical flow models which will further refine forecast models for the capacity of tidal energy production across the Raz Blanchard region. The data will also be used by the project industrial partners to refine design values for current flow, turbulence and wave interactions on the turbine blades and structure.

Three of the ADCP frames were deployed across the Normandy Hydroliennes site where a 12MW tidal array is under development, with the fourth deployed on the HydroQuest site where a 17.5MW tidal project is under development.