IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v13y2020i8p1977-d346549.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Experimental Assessment of Flow, Performance, and Loads for Tidal Turbines in a Closely-Spaced Array

Author

Listed:
  • Donald R. Noble

    (School of Engineering, Institute for Energy Systems, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3FB, UK)

  • Samuel Draycott

    (Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK)

  • Anup Nambiar

    (School of Engineering, Institute for Energy Systems, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3FB, UK)

  • Brian G. Sellar

    (School of Engineering, Institute for Energy Systems, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3FB, UK)

  • Jeffrey Steynor

    (School of Engineering, Institute for Energy Systems, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3FB, UK)

  • Aristides Kiprakis

    (School of Engineering, Institute for Energy Systems, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3FB, UK)

Abstract

Tidal stream turbines are subject to complex flow conditions, particularly when installed in staggered array configurations where the downstream turbines are affected by the wake and/or bypass flow of upstream turbines. This work presents, for the first time, methods for and results from the physical testing of three 1/15 scale instrumented turbines configured in a closely-spaced staggered array, and demonstrates experimentally that increased power extraction can be achieved through reduced array separation. A comprehensive set of flow measurements was taken during several weeks testing in the FloWave Ocean Energy Research Facility, with different configurations of turbines installed in the tank in a current of 0.8 m/s, to understand the effect that the front turbines have on flow through the array and on the inflow to the centrally placed rearmost turbine. Loads on the turbine structure, rotor, and blade roots were measured along with the rotational speed of the rotor to assess concurrently in real-time the effects of flow and array geometry on structural loading and performance. Operating in this closely-spaced array was found to improve the power delivered by the rear turbine by 5.7–10.4% with a corresponding increase in the thrust loading on the rotor of 4.8–7.3% around the peak power operating point. The experimental methods developed and results arising from this work will also be useful for further scale-testing elsewhere, validating numerical models, and for understanding the performance and loading of full-scale tidal stream turbines in arrays.

Suggested Citation

  • Donald R. Noble & Samuel Draycott & Anup Nambiar & Brian G. Sellar & Jeffrey Steynor & Aristides Kiprakis, 2020. "Experimental Assessment of Flow, Performance, and Loads for Tidal Turbines in a Closely-Spaced Array," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-17, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:8:p:1977-:d:346549
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/8/1977/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/8/1977/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Malki, Rami & Masters, Ian & Williams, Alison J. & Nick Croft, T., 2014. "Planning tidal stream turbine array layouts using a coupled blade element momentum – computational fluid dynamics model," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 46-54.
    2. Draycott, S. & Nambiar, A. & Sellar, B. & Davey, T. & Venugopal, V., 2019. "Assessing extreme loads on a tidal turbine using focused wave groups in energetic currents," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 1013-1024.
    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. 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.
    5. Sutherland, Duncan & Ordonez-Sanchez, Stephanie & Belmont, Michael R. & Moon, Ian & Steynor, Jeffrey & Davey, Thomas & Bruce, Tom, 2018. "Experimental optimisation of power for large arrays of cross-flow tidal turbines," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 116(PA), pages 685-696.
    6. 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.
    7. Payne, Grégory S. & Stallard, Tim & Martinez, Rodrigo, 2017. "Design and manufacture of a bed supported tidal turbine model for blade and shaft load measurement in turbulent flow and waves," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 312-326.
    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. Gambuzza, Stefano & Pisetta, Gabriele & Davey, Thomas & Steynor, Jeffrey & Viola, Ignazio Maria, 2023. "Model-scale experiments of passive pitch control for tidal turbines," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 205(C), pages 10-29.
    2. Badoe, Charles E. & Edmunds, Matt & Williams, Alison J. & Nambiar, Anup & Sellar, Brian & Kiprakis, Aristides & Masters, Ian, 2022. "Robust validation of a generalised actuator disk CFD model for tidal turbine analysis using the FloWave ocean energy research facility," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 232-250.
    3. Marilou Jourdain de Thieulloy & Mairi Dorward & Chris Old & Roman Gabl & Thomas Davey & David M. Ingram & Brian G. Sellar, 2020. "Single-Beam Acoustic Doppler Profiler and Co-Located Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter Flow Velocity Data," Data, MDPI, vol. 5(3), pages 1-11, July.
    4. Arturo Ortega & Joseph Praful Tomy & Jonathan Shek & Stephane Paboeuf & David Ingram, 2020. "An Inter-Comparison of Dynamic, Fully Coupled, Electro-Mechanical, Models of Tidal Turbines," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-19, October.
    5. Federico Attene & Francesco Balduzzi & Alessandro Bianchini & M. Sergio Campobasso, 2020. "Using Experimentally Validated Navier-Stokes CFD to Minimize Tidal Stream Turbine Power Losses Due to Wake/Turbine Interactions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(21), pages 1-26, October.
    6. Roman Gabl & Samuel Draycott & Ajit C. Pillai & Thomas Davey, 2021. "Experimental Data of Bottom Pressure and Free Surface Elevation including Wave and Current Interactions," Data, MDPI, vol. 6(10), pages 1-13, September.

    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. Sutherland, Duncan & Ordonez-Sanchez, Stephanie & Belmont, Michael R. & Moon, Ian & Steynor, Jeffrey & Davey, Thomas & Bruce, Tom, 2018. "Experimental optimisation of power for large arrays of cross-flow tidal turbines," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 116(PA), pages 685-696.
    2. Cooke, S.C. & Willden, R.H.J. & Byrne, B.W., 2016. "The potential of cross-stream aligned sub-arrays to increase tidal turbine efficiency," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 284-292.
    3. 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.
    4. Federico Attene & Francesco Balduzzi & Alessandro Bianchini & M. Sergio Campobasso, 2020. "Using Experimentally Validated Navier-Stokes CFD to Minimize Tidal Stream Turbine Power Losses Due to Wake/Turbine Interactions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(21), pages 1-26, October.
    5. Lo Brutto, Ottavio A. & Nguyen, Van Thinh & Guillou, Sylvain S. & Thiébot, Jérôme & Gualous, Hamid, 2016. "Tidal farm analysis using an analytical model for the flow velocity prediction in the wake of a tidal turbine with small diameter to depth ratio," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 347-359.
    6. Riglin, Jacob & Daskiran, Cosan & Jonas, Joseph & Schleicher, W. Chris & Oztekin, Alparslan, 2016. "Hydrokinetic turbine array characteristics for river applications and spatially restricted flows," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 274-283.
    7. Pyakurel, Parakram & VanZwieten, James H. & Sultan, Cornel & Dhanak, Manhar & Xiros, Nikolaos I., 2017. "Numerical simulation and dynamical response of a moored hydrokinetic turbine operating in the wake of an upstream turbine for control design," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 114(PB), pages 1134-1145.
    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. Lo Brutto, Ottavio A. & Thiébot, Jérôme & Guillou, Sylvain S. & Gualous, Hamid, 2016. "A semi-analytic method to optimize tidal farm layouts – Application to the Alderney Race (Raz Blanchard), France," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 1168-1180.
    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. 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.
    12. Gao, Jinjin & Liu, Han & Lee, Jiyong & Zheng, Yuan & Guala, Michele & Shen, Lian, 2022. "Large-eddy simulation and Co-Design strategy for a drag-type vertical axis hydrokinetic turbine in open channel flows," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 1305-1316.
    13. Badoe, Charles E. & Edmunds, Matt & Williams, Alison J. & Nambiar, Anup & Sellar, Brian & Kiprakis, Aristides & Masters, Ian, 2022. "Robust validation of a generalised actuator disk CFD model for tidal turbine analysis using the FloWave ocean energy research facility," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 232-250.
    14. Chen, Yaling & Lin, Binliang & Sun, Jian & Guo, Jinxi & Wu, Wenlong, 2019. "Hydrodynamic effects of the ratio of rotor diameter to water depth: An experimental study," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 331-341.
    15. Razi, P. & Ramaprabhu, P. & Tarey, P. & Muglia, M. & Vermillion, C., 2022. "A low-order wake interaction modeling framework for the performance of ocean current turbines under turbulent conditions," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 1602-1617.
    16. 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.
    17. Maduka, Maduka & Li, Chi Wai, 2022. "Experimental evaluation of power performance and wake characteristics of twin flanged duct turbines in tandem under bi-directional tidal flows," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 199(C), pages 1543-1567.
    18. 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.
    19. Zhang, Jisheng & Zhou, Yudi & Lin, Xiangfeng & Wang, Guohui & Guo, Yakun & Chen, Hao, 2022. "Experimental investigation on wake and thrust characteristics of a twin-rotor horizontal axis tidal stream turbine," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 195(C), pages 701-715.
    20. Clemente Gotelli & Mirko Musa & Michele Guala & Cristián Escauriaza, 2019. "Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Wake Interactions of Marine Hydrokinetic Turbines," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(16), pages 1-17, August.

    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:13:y:2020:i:8:p:1977-:d:346549. 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.