Experimental Study on New Active Yaw Controller of Scale Models of Tidal Current Turbines

摘要

Recently, tidal current turbines have gained high attention as systemsextracting predictable and sustainable renewable energy, but acommercial power generation in an array form is not started yet due totechnical, financial, and environmental uncertainties. In technicalaspects, power efficiency and structural safety would be critical for thesuccess in the tidal current generation. Active control is a powerfulapproach for achieving the high efficiency as well as the safe operationin the conditions of the variable direction and the variable speed of thetidal current even though the complexity of the turbine systemsincreases. This study is focused on the development of an activecontroller in the tidal current turbines. The new concept that we havedeveloped is the yaw control of the turbine systems by a rudder. Inorder to validate our new active-control concept, we conducted the indoorexperiments of a 1/15 scale turbine model including the activecontroller. The effect of the yaw control on the power efficiency wasanalyzed and minute yaw control as well as 180 degree turn by thecontroller was demonstrated. After the validation, the active-controllerwas enlarged to 1/5 scale model and was successfully demonstrated inan outdoor facility. Eventually, based on the results of this study, thefull-scale model of 200kW capacity and the corresponding activecontrollerwill be fabricated and be validated by in-situ tests over 2 m/sat the Uldolmok strait in South Korea.