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In order to facilitate development of tidal power, a high-resolution survey with unprecedentedly fine grids has been made for marine hydrokinetic (MHK) energy at the seashore of New Jersey (NJ) and its neighbor states (Tang, Kraatz, Qu, Chen, Aboobaker, Jiang. High-resolution survey of tidal energy towards power generation and influence of sea-level-rise: a case study at coast of New Jersey, USA. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 32 (2014), 960–982). As a sequel as well as the finish to this survey, the current paper makes a thorough search for potential sites for actual tidal power generation along the entire shorelines of NJ and partial coast of New York, with special attention to locations near transportation infrastructures, and it evaluates their power density, surface area, water depth, distance to environmentally sensitive zones, etc. A list of 32 top sites are identified along the coastlines, and, among them, 21 sites with total surface area of 13 km 2 are located in the nearshore regions of NJ, and many sites are found next to its bridges. Another 10 favorable sites are also picked up near ports, docks, and marinas in NJ. An estimate indicates that 3.95×10 5 kW of tidal power could be extracted from the 21 sites. Analysis shows that sea-level-rise could substantially change tidal energy at the identified sites, and it is a factor that has to be taken into account in site selection. On the basis of these results, the approaches for a high-resolution survey for MHK energy are summarized and their future development is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The first and a crucial step in development of tidal power, which is now attracting more and more attention worldwide, is a reliable survey of temporal and spatial distribution of tidal energy along coastlines. This paper first reviews the advance in assessment of tidal energy, in particular marine hydrokinetic (MHK) energy, and discusses involved challenges and necessary approaches, and then it makes a thorough survey as an illustrative case study on distributions and top sites of MHK energy within the Might-Atlantic-Bight (MAB) with emphasis on the New Jersey (NJ) coastlines. In view of the needs in actual development of tidal power generation and sensitivity of tidal power to flow speed, the former being proportional to the third power of the latter, a high-resolution and detailed modeling is desired. Data with best available accuracy for coastlines, bathymetry, tributaries, etc. are used, meshes as fine as 20m and less for the whole NJ coast are generated, and the unstructured grid finite volume coastal ocean model (FVCOM) and high performance computing (HPC) facilities are employed. Besides comparison with observation data, a series of numerical tests have been made to ensure reliability of the modeling results. A detailed tidal energy distribution and a list of top sites for tidal power are presented. It is shown that indeed sea-level-rise (SLR) affects the tidal energy distribution significantly. With SLR of 0.5m and 1m, tidal energy in NJ coastal waters increases by 21% and 43%, respectively, and the number of the top sties tends to decrease along the barrier islands facing the Atlantic Ocean and increase in the Delaware Bay and the Delaware River. On the basis of these results, further discussions are made on future development for accurate assessment of tidal energy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]