Abstract
During summer 2014, the Alaska Hydrokinetic Energy Research Center (AHERC) and OCEANA Energy Company (OCEANA) conducted performance tests on OCEANA’s river energy converter (REC) at the Tanana River Test Site (TRTS). OCEANA’s REC was deployed from AHERC’s test barge moored immediately downstream from AHERC’s research debris diversion platform (RDDP), which was moored to a midstream buoy attached to an embedment anchor. RECs operating on large uncontrolled rivers can be subject to impacts from woody debris that can cause damage, result in unsustainable operating and maintenance costs and create safety hazards. To reduce the risk of debris impacts on RECs deployed from floating platforms the AHERC developed the RDDP and demonstrated itseffectiveness at the TRTS in Nenana, Alaska. A concern of placing a REC downstream from the RDDP is that turbulence generated by flow around and under the RDDP might adversely affect the power performance of the REC. To examine the influence of RDDP generated turbulence on OCEANA turbine performance the power output of the turbine was determined at 14.5, 50m and 100m downstream from the RDDP. The 14.5 m downstream distance was the default position of the turbine during most of the performance testing.