Abstract
As only a few tidal turbine developers took the plunge to full-scale installation, the community lacks clear feedback on the validity of lab-scale results’ extrapolation for full-scale design. Since spring 2019, HydroQuest has been testing its first 1 MW tidal turbine HydroQuest Ocean at Paimpol-Brehat site. For the development of the next tidal turbine generations, the company wants to validate its design methods and its ability to well predict fullscale behaviour from lab-scale experiments. To this aim, a lab-scale prototype similar to the one installed at Paimpol-Brehat is designed. It will be tested in the wave and current circulating tank of Ifremer to compare results obtained at both scales. In this paper, we present HydroQuest Ocean with its embedded instrumentation in a first part and we provide a synthetic feedback on environmental conditions and performances measured in-situ. Then, in a second part, the lab-scale representation of the demonstrator is discussed. The scaled model is geometrically similar to the demonstrator despite two functioning differences. Velocity profiles as well as turbulent intensity level will be modelled accurately in the tests to come. However harsh wave conditions will be limited to short wave periods.