Influence of Tidal Parameters on SeaGen Power Quality Performance

Paper i proceeding, 2011

This paper presents the analysis of the study of the flicker emitted from the 1.2MW tidal energy converter, SeaGen, against varying tidal parameters. SeaGen is a grid connected TEC in almost continuous service since May 2009 and a detailed power quality assessment was carried out onsite over a number of months in late 2009 and early 2010. The paper outlines the main elements of the TEC itself, the environment it is located in and the measurement setup. In this paper the flicker emitted by the TEC is compared to the different tidal parameters including flood and ebb tides, tidal velocity, tidal acceleration, water depth and turbulence intensity. Flicker emissions have been calculated from measured data in over 90 measurement (10 minute) periods and all of the tidal parameters vary significantly over that testing period. This allows for a detailed statistical and graphical analysis of the variation of flicker with the variation of the tidal parameters outlined above. It is found, with the exception of tidal velocity, that there is no strong correlation of flicker emissions with any other tidal parameter. As SeaGen is an asymmetrical TEC with full blade pitching for flood and ebb generation, it was also found that the expected difference of flicker emissions due to the effect of the submersed crossbeam was not significant.