As interest in renewable energy sources is steadily on the rise, tidal current energy is receiving more and more attention from politicans, industrialists, and academics. In this article, the conditions for and potential of tidal currents as an energy resource in Norway are reviewed. There having been a relatively small amount of academic work published in this particular field, closely related topics such as the energy situation in Norway in general, the oceanography of the Norwegian coastline, and numerical models of tidal currents in Norwegian waters are also examined. Two published tidal energy resource assessments are reviewed and compared to a desktop study made specifically for this review based on available data in pilot books. The argument is made that tidal current energy ought to be an important option for Norway in terms of renewable energy.

An experimental station for marine current power has been installed in a river. The station comprises a vertical axis turbine with a direct-driven permanent magnet synchronous generator. In measurements of steady-state operation in varying flow conditions, performance comparable to that of turbines designed for significantly higher flow speeds is achieved, demonstrating the viability of electricity generation in low speed (below 1.5 m/s) marine currents.

This paper investigates three load control methods for a marine current energy converter using a vertical axis current turbine (VACT) mounted on a permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG). The three cases are; a fixed AC load, a fixed pulse width modulated (PWM) DC load and DC bus voltage control of a DC load. Experimental results show that the DC bus voltage control reduces the variations of rotational speed by a factor of 3.5 at the cost of slightly increased losses in the generator and transmission lines. For all three cases, the tip speed ratio λ can be kept close to the expected λ opt . The power coefficient is estimated to be 0.36 at λ opt ; however, for all three cases, the average extracted power was about ∼ 19%. A maximum power point tracking (MPPT) system, with or without water velocity measurement, could increase the average extracted power.

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