Assessment of Tidal Current Energy Potential at Uldolmok in the Southwestern Coast of Korea

Abstract

Quantitative assessment for the tidal current energy potential and marine conditions should be preceded to construct the optimal tidal energy farm. Assessment of tidal energy resource at Uldolmok which is the optimal candidate sites for tidal energy farm was carried out. In order to collect the field data, static survey using ADCP(Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler) was conducted and harmonic analysis was done to predict the annual tidal current. As a result, the dominant direction of ebb current was southeast and flood current was northwest. The maximum ebb current speed was about 4.09 m/s. While, annual power density was estimated as 56.78MWII/m(2). 1MW(HS 1000), 1.2MW(MCT 1200), 1.5MW(AR 1500), 2MW(SeaGen-S 2000) that were commercially available turbines in the world were used to calculate the annual energy production. SeaGen-S was possible to produce the highest annual energy production up to 9,338.4MWh. These results can be used to establish a plan for the development of the tidal current energy farm.