Unsteady surface wave influence on tidal current power forecasting

Abstract

Tidal current energy is considered as one of the most important topics to be analyzed due to the penetration of renewable energy sources into the grid. The influence of unsteady wave is playing a crucial role on the tidal currents speed forecasting and its extracted power as well as its integration into the grid. The influence is not significant in case of single turbine or ducted tidal turbines. That is particularly important when taking in account the wave effect as a significant factor to predict the potential of tidal energy in various locations and evaluate the power losses due to severe weather condition. In this work we studied the influence of unsteady wave on the tidal current energy in case of two and three tidal turbines. The proposed work is validated by using more than one forecasting model based on ANN as well as making an interface with the Arduino (micro controller) using MATLAB/Simulink to calculate the power loss due to the wave effect during severe weather conditions. Results proves that using the wave height as an input for the forecasting models will improve the forecasted speed. Also, wave height will reduce the extracted output power and increase the power losses especially in case of multi turbines due to the increase of wave height.