Research on Performance Evaluation of Tidal Energy Turbine under Variable Velocity

Abstract

Aiming at the performance evaluation problem of tidal energy turbines in the application of periodic time-varying flow velocity, with the goal of maximizing the efficiency of energy harvesting in practical applications, an evaluation system combining the characteristics of flow velocity changes in practical applications is proposed. After long-term monitoring of tidal current flow velocity in the applied sea area, the actual measured tidal current periodic flow velocity is divided into several flow velocity segments by using statistical segmentation, and the evaluation flow velocity of each flow velocity segment and its time proportion in the tidal current cycle are obtained. A test device with constant torque regulation is built, and capture power tests of different torque loads are carried out under each evaluation flow rate. After comparison, the maximum captured power at each evaluation flow rate is determined. We calculate the weight based on the time proportion of each evaluation flow velocity and obtain the turbine average power of the tidal cycle, thereby evaluating the overall energy capture performance of the turbine under the periodic time-varying flow velocity. Finally, the application test of the turbine in the actual sea area shows that the thin-walled airfoil turbine is more suitable for the sea area, which is the same as the pool evaluation result. The result shows that the evaluation system is reliable and effective and has significance for guiding practical engineering.

Cross-Flow Tidal Turbines with Highly Flexible Blades—Experimental Flow Field Investigations at Strong Fluid–Structure Interactions

“…This leads to high area-based power density as shown by Dabiri 2011 and others [1][2][3]. Additionally, they are in general of simple construction and operate independently of the stream direction, which is an important advantage for applications in tidal streams, featuring frequent variations in flow speed and direction [4].…”