IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/rensus/v57y2016icp1245-1259.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Hydrokinetic energy conversion: Technology, research, and outlook

Author

Listed:
  • Laws, Nicholas D.
  • Epps, Brenden P.

Abstract

Interest in the advancement of hydrokinetic energy conversion (HEC) technology has grown substantially in recent years. The hydrokinetic industry has advanced beyond the initial testing phase and will soon install demonstration projects with arrays of full-scale devices. By reviewing the current state of the industry and the cutting edge research this paper identifies the key advancements required for HEC technology to become commercially successful at the utility scale. The primary hurdles are: (i) reducing the cost of energy, (ii) optimizing individual turbines to work in concert considering array and bathymetry effects, (iii) balancing energy extraction with environmental impact, and (iv) addressing socioeconomic concerns.

Suggested Citation

  • Laws, Nicholas D. & Epps, Brenden P., 2016. "Hydrokinetic energy conversion: Technology, research, and outlook," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 1245-1259.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:rensus:v:57:y:2016:i:c:p:1245-1259
    DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2015.12.189
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032115015725
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.rser.2015.12.189?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bai, Guanghui & Li, Jun & Fan, Pengfei & Li, Guojun, 2013. "Numerical investigations of the effects of different arrays on power extractions of horizontal axis tidal current turbines," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 180-186.
    2. Bahaj, A.S. & Myers, L.E., 2013. "Shaping array design of marine current energy converters through scaled experimental analysis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 83-94.
    3. Vennell, Ross & Funke, Simon W. & Draper, Scott & Stevens, Craig & Divett, Tim, 2015. "Designing large arrays of tidal turbines: A synthesis and review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 454-472.
    4. Vennell, Ross, 2012. "Realizing the potential of tidal currents and the efficiency of turbine farms in a channel," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 95-102.
    5. Kinsey, T. & Dumas, G. & Lalande, G. & Ruel, J. & Méhut, A. & Viarouge, P. & Lemay, J. & Jean, Y., 2011. "Prototype testing of a hydrokinetic turbine based on oscillating hydrofoils," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 1710-1718.
    6. Vennell, Ross, 2012. "The energetics of large tidal turbine arrays," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 210-219.
    7. Jeffcoate, Penny & Whittaker, Trevor & Boake, Cuan & Elsaesser, Bjoern, 2016. "Field tests of multiple 1/10 scale tidal turbines in steady flows," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 87(P1), pages 240-252.
    8. Funke, S.W. & Farrell, P.E. & Piggott, M.D., 2014. "Tidal turbine array optimisation using the adjoint approach," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 658-673.
    9. Karbasian, H.R. & Esfahani, J.A. & Barati, E., 2015. "Simulation of power extraction from tidal currents by flapping foil hydrokinetic turbines in tandem formation," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 816-824.
    10. Neary, Vincent S. & Gunawan, Budi & Hill, Craig & Chamorro, Leonardo P., 2013. "Near and far field flow disturbances induced by model hydrokinetic turbine: ADV and ADP comparison," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 1-6.
    11. Vennell, Ross, 2013. "Exceeding the Betz limit with tidal turbines," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 277-285.
    12. Robins, Peter E. & Neill, Simon P. & Lewis, Matt J., 2014. "Impact of tidal-stream arrays in relation to the natural variability of sedimentary processes," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 311-321.
    13. Bachant, Peter & Wosnik, Martin, 2015. "Performance measurements of cylindrical- and spherical-helical cross-flow marine hydrokinetic turbines, with estimates of exergy efficiency," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 318-325.
    14. Hill, Craig & Musa, Mirko & Guala, Michele, 2016. "Interaction between instream axial flow hydrokinetic turbines and uni-directional flow bedforms," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 409-421.
    15. Neill, Simon P. & Jordan, James R. & Couch, Scott J., 2012. "Impact of tidal energy converter (TEC) arrays on the dynamics of headland sand banks," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 387-397.
    16. Gunawan, Budi & Neary, Vincent S. & Colby, Jonathan, 2014. "Tidal energy site resource assessment in the East River tidal strait, near Roosevelt Island, New York, New York," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 509-517.
    17. Neill, Simon P. & Litt, Emmer J. & Couch, Scott J. & Davies, Alan G., 2009. "The impact of tidal stream turbines on large-scale sediment dynamics," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 34(12), pages 2803-2812.
    18. Kolekar, Nitin & Banerjee, Arindam, 2015. "Performance characterization and placement of a marine hydrokinetic turbine in a tidal channel under boundary proximity and blockage effects," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 121-133.
    19. Walker, Jessica M. & Flack, Karen A. & Lust, Ethan E. & Schultz, Michael P. & Luznik, Luksa, 2014. "Experimental and numerical studies of blade roughness and fouling on marine current turbine performance," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 257-267.
    20. Tedds, S.C. & Owen, I. & Poole, R.J., 2014. "Near-wake characteristics of a model horizontal axis tidal stream turbine," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 222-235.
    21. Myers, L.E. & Bahaj, A.S., 2012. "An experimental investigation simulating flow effects in first generation marine current energy converter arrays," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 28-36.
    22. Luznik, Luksa & Flack, Karen A. & Lust, Ethan E. & Taylor, Katharin, 2013. "The effect of surface waves on the performance characteristics of a model tidal turbine," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 108-114.
    23. Schluntz, J. & Willden, R.H.J., 2015. "The effect of blockage on tidal turbine rotor design and performance," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 432-441.
    24. Romero-Gomez, Pedro & Richmond, Marshall C., 2014. "Simulating blade-strike on fish passing through marine hydrokinetic turbines," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 401-413.
    25. Ahmadian, Reza & Falconer, Roger & Bockelmann-Evans, Bettina, 2012. "Far-field modelling of the hydro-environmental impact of tidal stream turbines," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 107-116.
    26. Yavuz, T. & Koç, E. & Kılkış, B. & Erol, Ö. & Balas, C. & Aydemir, T., 2015. "Performance analysis of the airfoil-slat arrangements for hydro and wind turbine applications," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 414-421.
    27. Bonar, Paul A.J. & Bryden, Ian G. & Borthwick, Alistair G.L., 2015. "Social and ecological impacts of marine energy development," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 486-495.
    28. Kartezhnikova, Maria & Ravens, Thomas M., 2014. "Hydraulic impacts of hydrokinetic devices," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 425-432.
    29. Galloway, Pascal W. & Myers, Luke E. & Bahaj, AbuBakr S., 2014. "Quantifying wave and yaw effects on a scale tidal stream turbine," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 297-307.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Segura, E. & Morales, R. & Somolinos, J.A., 2018. "A strategic analysis of tidal current energy conversion systems in the European Union," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 527-551.
    2. Musa, Mirko & Hill, Craig & Guala, Michele, 2019. "Interaction between hydrokinetic turbine wakes and sediment dynamics: array performance and geomorphic effects under different siting strategies and sediment transport conditions," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 738-753.
    3. Chen, Yaling & Lin, Binliang & Lin, Jie & Wang, Shujie, 2017. "Experimental study of wake structure behind a horizontal axis tidal stream turbine," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 196(C), pages 82-96.
    4. Vennell, Ross & Funke, Simon W. & Draper, Scott & Stevens, Craig & Divett, Tim, 2015. "Designing large arrays of tidal turbines: A synthesis and review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 454-472.
    5. Nash, S. & Phoenix, A., 2017. "A review of the current understanding of the hydro-environmental impacts of energy removal by tidal turbines," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 648-662.
    6. Deng, Guizhong & Zhang, Zhaoru & Li, Ye & Liu, Hailong & Xu, Wentao & Pan, Yulin, 2020. "Prospective of development of large-scale tidal current turbine array: An example numerical investigation of Zhejiang, China," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 264(C).
    7. 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).
    8. 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).
    9. Lewis, M. & Neill, S.P. & Robins, P.E. & Hashemi, M.R., 2015. "Resource assessment for future generations of tidal-stream energy arrays," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 403-415.
    10. Niebuhr, C.M. & Schmidt, S. & van Dijk, M. & Smith, L. & Neary, V.S., 2022. "A review of commercial numerical modelling approaches for axial hydrokinetic turbine wake analysis in channel flow," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    11. Kumar, Dinesh & Sarkar, Shibayan, 2016. "A review on the technology, performance, design optimization, reliability, techno-economics and environmental impacts of hydrokinetic energy conversion systems," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 796-813.
    12. Fairley, I. & Masters, I. & Karunarathna, H., 2015. "The cumulative impact of tidal stream turbine arrays on sediment transport in the Pentland Firth," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 755-769.
    13. 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.
    14. González-Gorbeña, Eduardo & Qassim, Raad Y. & Rosman, Paulo C.C., 2018. "Multi-dimensional optimisation of Tidal Energy Converters array layouts considering geometric, economic and environmental constraints," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 116(PA), pages 647-658.
    15. Li, Xiaorong & Li, Ming & Jordan, Laura-Beth & McLelland, Stuart & Parsons, Daniel R. & Amoudry, Laurent O. & Song, Qingyang & Comerford, Liam, 2019. "Modelling impacts of tidal stream turbines on surface waves," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 725-734.
    16. González-Gorbeña, Eduardo & Qassim, Raad Y. & Rosman, Paulo C.C., 2016. "Optimisation of hydrokinetic turbine array layouts via surrogate modelling," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 45-57.
    17. Philip A. Gillibrand & Roy A. Walters & Jason McIlvenny, 2016. "Numerical Simulations of the Effects of a Tidal Turbine Array on Near-Bed Velocity and Local Bed Shear Stress," Energies, MDPI, vol. 9(10), pages 1-22, October.
    18. Marta-Almeida, Martinho & Cirano, Mauro & Guedes Soares, Carlos & Lessa, Guilherme C., 2017. "A numerical tidal stream energy assessment study for Baía de Todos os Santos, Brazil," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 271-287.
    19. Li, Xiaorong & Li, Ming & McLelland, Stuart J. & Jordan, Laura-Beth & Simmons, Stephen M. & Amoudry, Laurent O. & Ramirez-Mendoza, Rafael & Thorne, Peter D., 2017. "Modelling tidal stream turbines in a three-dimensional wave-current fully coupled oceanographic model," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 114(PA), pages 297-307.
    20. Craig Hill & Vincent S. Neary & Michele Guala & Fotis Sotiropoulos, 2020. "Performance and Wake Characterization of a Model Hydrokinetic Turbine: The Reference Model 1 (RM1) Dual Rotor Tidal Energy Converter," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(19), pages 1-21, October.

    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:eee:rensus:v:57:y:2016:i:c:p:1245-1259. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/description#description .

    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.