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Determining tidal turbine farm efficiency in the Western Passage using the disc actuator theory

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Abstract

Tidal power potential is determined across the Western Passage in Passamaquoddy Bay using the Finite Volume Community Ocean Model (FVCOM). The tidal turbines are implemented in FVCOM using the disc actuator theory method to determine the power potential for different densities and arrangements of tidal turbines. At the most efficient setting for 10 turbines across the Western Passage, the optimal turbine drag coefficient is 2.0 and the average power output, in a 2-week period, is ∼819 kW. Results suggest that for a single row of turbines, the addition of turbines decreases the efficiency of the turbine farm, but this decrease in efficiency is less than 7 %. A parallel distribution of turbines in an array diminishes the average power for turbines in the shadow of other turbines, while staggered distribution in an array increases the average power extraction for some turbines, due to the speed gains in the gaps between turbines. A simple tidal farm optimization using the OpenTidalFarm (OTF) model suggests a similar tidal farm distribution.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Steve Cousins from the University of Maine for his assistance in coding and setting up our numerical experiments. The work is supported by the Department of Energy award number DE-EE0000298 and Argonne National Laboratory contract number 3F-30543 to the University of Maine.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Marine Sciences, University of Maine, Orono, ME, 04469-5706, USA

    Shivanesh Rao & Huijie Xue

  2. State Key Laboratory of Satellite Ocean Environment Dynamics, 2nd Institute of Oceanography, Hangzhou, 310012, China

    Min Bao

  3. Center for Biomedical Computing, Simula Research Laboratory, Fornebu, Norway

    Simon Funke

Authors
  1. Shivanesh Rao
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  2. Huijie Xue
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  3. Min Bao
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  4. Simon Funke
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shivanesh Rao.

Additional information

Responsible Editor: Jinyu Sheng

This article is part of the Topical Collection on the 6th International Workshop on Modeling the Ocean (IWMO) in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada 23-27 June 2014

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Rao, S., Xue, H., Bao, M. et al. Determining tidal turbine farm efficiency in the Western Passage using the disc actuator theory. Ocean Dynamics 66, 41–57 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-015-0906-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-015-0906-y

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