IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v12y2019i6p1035-d214631.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rotor Loading Characteristics of a Full-Scale Tidal Turbine

Author

Listed:
  • Magnus Harrold

    (University of Exeter, College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 9FE, UK
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

  • Pablo Ouro

    (Hydro-Environmental Research Centre, School of Engineering, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF24 3AA, UK
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

Abstract

Tidal turbines are subject to highly dynamic mechanical loading through operation in some of the most energetic waters. If these loads cannot be accurately quantified at the design stage, turbine developers run the risk of a major failure, or must choose to conservatively over-engineer the device at additional cost. Both of these scenarios have consequences on the expected return from the project. Despite an extensive amount of research on the mechanical loading of model scale tidal turbines, very little is known from full-scale devices operating in real sea conditions. This paper addresses this by reporting on the rotor loads measured on a 400 kW tidal turbine. The results obtained during ebb tidal conditions were found to agree well with theoretical predictions of rotor loading, but the measurements during flood were lower than expected. This is believed to be due to a disturbance in the approaching flood flow created by the turbine frame geometry, and, to a lesser extent, the non-typical vertical flow profile during this tidal phase. These findings outline the necessity to quantify the characteristics of the turbulent flows at sea sites during the entire tidal cycle to ensure the long-term integrity of the deployed tidal turbines.

Suggested Citation

  • Magnus Harrold & Pablo Ouro, 2019. "Rotor Loading Characteristics of a Full-Scale Tidal Turbine," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-19, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:6:p:1035-:d:214631
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/6/1035/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/6/1035/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carwyn Frost & Ian Benson & Penny Jeffcoate & Björn Elsäßer & Trevor Whittaker, 2018. "The Effect of Control Strategy on Tidal Stream Turbine Performance in Laboratory and Field Experiments," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-16, June.
    2. Roche, R.C. & Walker-Springett, K. & Robins, P.E. & Jones, J. & Veneruso, G. & Whitton, T.A. & Piano, M. & Ward, S.L. & Duce, C.E. & Waggitt, J.J. & Walker-Springett, G.R. & Neill, S.P. & Lewis, M.J. , 2016. "Research priorities for assessing potential impacts of emerging marine renewable energy technologies: Insights from developments in Wales (UK)," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 1327-1341.
    3. Milne, I.A. & Day, A.H. & Sharma, R.N. & Flay, R.G.J., 2016. "The characterisation of the hydrodynamic loads on tidal turbines due to turbulence," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 851-864.
    4. Lewis, M. & Neill, S.P. & Robins, P. & Hashemi, M.R. & Ward, S., 2017. "Characteristics of the velocity profile at tidal-stream energy sites," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 114(PA), pages 258-272.
    5. Mycek, Paul & Gaurier, Benoît & Germain, Grégory & Pinon, Grégory & Rivoalen, Elie, 2014. "Experimental study of the turbulence intensity effects on marine current turbines behaviour. Part II: Two interacting turbines," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 876-892.
    6. Mycek, Paul & Gaurier, Benoît & Germain, Grégory & Pinon, Grégory & Rivoalen, Elie, 2014. "Experimental study of the turbulence intensity effects on marine current turbines behaviour. Part I: One single turbine," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 729-746.
    7. Evans, P. & Mason-Jones, A. & Wilson, C. & Wooldridge, C. & O'Doherty, T. & O'Doherty, D., 2015. "Constraints on extractable power from energetic tidal straits," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 707-722.
    8. Fairley, Iain & Evans, Paul & Wooldridge, Chris & Willis, Miles & Masters, Ian, 2013. "Evaluation of tidal stream resource in a potential array area via direct measurements," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 70-78.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhen Qin & Xiaoran Tang & Yu-Ting Wu & Sung-Ki Lyu, 2022. "Advancement of Tidal Current Generation Technology in Recent Years: A Review," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(21), pages 1-18, October.
    2. Moreau, Martin & Germain, Grégory & Maurice, Guillaume, 2023. "Experimental performance and wake study of a ducted twin vertical axis turbine in ebb and flood tide currents at a 1/20th scale," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 214(C), pages 318-333.
    3. Alyona Naberezhnykh & David Ingram & Ian Ashton & Joel Culina, 2023. "How Applicable Are Turbulence Assumptions Used in the Tidal Energy Industry?," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(4), pages 1-21, February.
    4. Okulov, V.L. & Naumov, I.V. & Kabardin, I.K. & Litvinov, I.V. & Markovich, D.M. & Mikkelsen, R.F. & Sørensen, J.N. & Alekseenko, S.V. & Wood, D.H., 2021. "Experiments on line arrays of horizontal-axis hydroturbines," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 15-21.
    5. Stylianos Argyrios Pitsikoulis & Sravya Tekumalla & Anurag Sharma & Wai Leong Eugene Wong & Serkan Turkmen & Pengfei Liu, 2023. "Cavitation Hydrodynamic Performance of 3-D Printed Highly Skewed Stainless Steel Tidal Turbine Rotors," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(9), pages 1-26, April.
    6. Robynne E. Murray & Andrew Simms & Aidan Bharath & Ryan Beach & Mark Murphy & Levi Kilcher & Andy Scholbrock, 2023. "Toward the Instrumentation and Data Acquisition of a Tidal Turbine in Real Site Conditions," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(3), pages 1-14, January.
    7. Lilian Lieber & Shaun Fraser & Daniel Coles & W. Alex M. Nimmo-Smith, 2024. "Sheared turbulent flows and wake dynamics of an idled floating tidal turbine," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-17, December.
    8. Larissa Perez & Remo Cossu & Camille Couzi & Irene Penesis, 2020. "Wave-Turbulence Decomposition Methods Applied to Tidal Energy Site Assessment," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-21, March.
    9. Perez, Larissa & Cossu, Remo & Grinham, Alistair & Penesis, Irene, 2022. "An investigation of tidal turbine performance and loads under various turbulence conditions using Blade Element Momentum theory and high-frequency field data acquired in two prospective tidal energy s," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 201(P1), pages 928-937.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Draycott, S. & Sellar, B. & Davey, T. & Noble, D.R. & Venugopal, V. & Ingram, D.M., 2019. "Capture and simulation of the ocean environment for offshore renewable energy," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 15-29.
    2. Enayatollah Zangiabadi & Matt Edmunds & Iain A. Fairley & Michael Togneri & Alison J. Williams & Ian Masters & Nick Croft, 2015. "Computational Fluid Dynamics and Visualisation of Coastal Flows in Tidal Channels Supporting Ocean Energy Development," Energies, MDPI, vol. 8(6), pages 1-16, June.
    3. Yang, Zhixue & Ren, Zhouyang & Li, Hui & Pan, Zhen & Xia, Weiyi, 2024. "A review of tidal current power generation farm planning: Methodologies, characteristics and challenges," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 220(C).
    4. Vinod, Ashwin & Han, Cong & Banerjee, Arindam, 2021. "Tidal turbine performance and near-wake characteristics in a sheared turbulent inflow," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 840-852.
    5. Thiébaut, Maxime & Filipot, Jean-François & Maisondieu, Christophe & Damblans, Guillaume & Duarte, Rui & Droniou, Eloi & Chaplain, Nicolas & Guillou, Sylvain, 2020. "A comprehensive assessment of turbulence at a tidal-stream energy site influenced by wind-generated ocean waves," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    6. Fowell, R. & Togneri, M. & Pacheco, A. & Nourrisson, O., 2022. "Use of an environmental proxy to determine turbulence regime surrounding a full-scale tidal turbine deployed within the Fromveur Strait, Brittany, France," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 326(C).
    7. Thiébaut, Maxime & Sentchev, Alexei & du Bois, Pascal Bailly, 2019. "Merging velocity measurements and modeling to improve understanding of tidal stream resource in Alderney Race," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 460-470.
    8. Mujahid Badshah & Saeed Badshah & James VanZwieten & Sakhi Jan & Muhammad Amir & Suheel Abdullah Malik, 2019. "Coupled Fluid-Structure Interaction Modelling of Loads Variation and Fatigue Life of a Full-Scale Tidal Turbine under the Effect of Velocity Profile," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-22, June.
    9. Fairley, Iain & Williamson, Benjamin J. & McIlvenny, Jason & King, Nicholas & Masters, Ian & Lewis, Matthew & Neill, Simon & Glasby, David & Coles, Daniel & Powell, Ben & Naylor, Keith & Robinson, Max, 2022. "Drone-based large-scale particle image velocimetry applied to tidal stream energy resource assessment," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 196(C), pages 839-855.
    10. Ian Masters & Alison Williams & T. Nick Croft & Michael Togneri & Matt Edmunds & Enayatollah Zangiabadi & Iain Fairley & Harshinie Karunarathna, 2015. "A Comparison of Numerical Modelling Techniques for Tidal Stream Turbine Analysis," Energies, MDPI, vol. 8(8), pages 1-21, July.
    11. Marco Piano & Peter E. Robins & Alan G. Davies & Simon P. Neill, 2018. "The Influence of Intra-Array Wake Dynamics on Depth-Averaged Kinetic Tidal Turbine Energy Extraction Simulations," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(10), pages 1-21, October.
    12. Vinod, Ashwin & Banerjee, Arindam, 2019. "Performance and near-wake characterization of a tidal current turbine in elevated levels of free stream turbulence," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 254(C).
    13. Perez, Larissa & Cossu, Remo & Grinham, Alistair & Penesis, Irene, 2021. "Seasonality of turbulence characteristics and wave-current interaction in two prospective tidal energy sites," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 1322-1336.
    14. Edmunds, Matt & Williams, Alison J. & Masters, Ian & Banerjee, Arindam & VanZwieten, James H., 2020. "A spatially nonlinear generalised actuator disk model for the simulation of horizontal axis wind and tidal turbines," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    15. Van Thinh Nguyen & Alina Santa Cruz & Sylvain S. Guillou & Mohamad N. Shiekh Elsouk & Jérôme Thiébot, 2019. "Effects of the Current Direction on the Energy Production of a Tidal Farm: The Case of Raz Blanchard (France)," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(13), pages 1-20, June.
    16. Magnier, Maëlys & Delette, Nina & Druault, Philippe & Gaurier, Benoît & Germain, Grégory, 2022. "Experimental study of the shear flow effect on tidal turbine blade loading variation," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 193(C), pages 744-757.
    17. Larissa Perez & Remo Cossu & Camille Couzi & Irene Penesis, 2020. "Wave-Turbulence Decomposition Methods Applied to Tidal Energy Site Assessment," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-21, March.
    18. Sentchev, Alexei & Thiébaut, Maxime & Schmitt, François G., 2020. "Impact of turbulence on power production by a free-stream tidal turbine in real sea conditions," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 147(P1), pages 1932-1940.
    19. Brian G. Sellar & Gareth Wakelam & Duncan R. J. Sutherland & David M. Ingram & Vengatesan Venugopal, 2018. "Characterisation of Tidal Flows at the European Marine Energy Centre in the Absence of Ocean Waves," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-23, January.
    20. Ebdon, Tim & Allmark, Matthew J. & O’Doherty, Daphne M. & Mason-Jones, Allan & O’Doherty, Tim & Germain, Gregory & Gaurier, Benoit, 2021. "The impact of turbulence and turbine operating condition on the wakes of tidal turbines," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 165(P2), pages 96-116.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:6:p:1035-:d:214631. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.