Electrical Power Conversion of River and Tidal Power Generator

Eduard Muljadi, Vahan Gevorgian, Alan Wright, James Donegan, Cian Marnagh, Jarlath McEntee

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

3 Scopus Citations

Abstract

As renewable generation has become less expensive during recent decades, and it becomes more accepted by the global population, the focus on renewable generation has expanded to include new types with promising future applications, such as river and tidal generation. Although the utilization of power electronics and electric machines in industry is phenomenal, the emphasis on system design is different for various sectors of industry. In precision control, robotics, and weaponry, the design emphasis is on accuracy and reliability with less concern for the cost of the final product. In energy generation, the cost of energy is the prime concern; thus, capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operations and maintenance expenditures (OPEX) are the major design objectives. This paper describes the electrical power conversion aspects of river and tidal generation. Although modern power converter control is available to control the generation side, the design was chosen on the bases of minimizing the CAPEX and OPEX; thus, the architecture is simple and modular for ease of replacement and maintenance. The power conversion is simplified by considering a simple diode bridge and a DC-DC power converter to take advantage of abundant and low-cost photovoltaic inverters that have well-proven grid integration characteristics (i.e., the capability to produce energy with good power quality and control real power and voltage on the grid side).

Original languageAmerican English
Number of pages6
DOIs
StatePublished - 17 Nov 2016
Event48th North American Power Symposium, NAPS 2016 - Denver, United States
Duration: 18 Sep 201620 Sep 2016

Conference

Conference48th North American Power Symposium, NAPS 2016
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityDenver
Period18/09/1620/09/16

Bibliographical note

See NREL/CP-5D00-66866 for preprint

NREL Publication Number

  • NREL/CP-5D00-67834

Keywords

  • distributed generation
  • hydrokinetic
  • marine
  • ocean power
  • renewable
  • river
  • tidal
  • variable generation
  • water power

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