Abstract
The turbulence in tidal flows affects the design and operation of tidal plants, e.g., through control system and dynamical loads. Present work is focused on a specific site west of Holy Island along the north west cost of Wales and a specific tidal power plant, Deep Green. Although, specific and applied, the work is generally applicable regarding findings and modelling techniques for other sites and designs.
Large Eddy Simulations (LES) are used to study first the undisturbed tidal flow and then the flow with a power plant in operation. The undisturbed tidal flow simulations show that the turbulence characteristics differ between the acceleration and deceleration phase of the tidal cycle. The turbulence statistics are also used to estimate dynamical loads on the tidal plant with respect to, e.g., fatigue.
Secondly, a novel Actuator Line Method (ALM) tidal power plant model, that e.g., takes the arbitrary trajectories of the power plant wing into account, is used. It’s used to study how the power plants affect the environment, available power downstream, and turbulence characteristics affecting other power plants in possible power plant arrays. It is shown that the width of the trajectory can be used as a measure to estimate the wake extent.