An up-to-date review of large marine tidal current turbine technologies

Abstract

Owning to the predictability of tidal current resources, marine tidal current energy is considered to be a reliable and promising renewable power source for coastal areas or some remote islands. During the last 10 years, various original horizontal axis and vertical axis marine current turbines (MCT) have been developed around the world. Although various projects have been reported in the state-of-the-art research papers in recent years, many of these projects were only at the design stage when the papers were published. In fact, some projects do not have any further developments during the several years after the first reporting. In this paper, up-to-date information about large tidal turbine projects over 500 kW is focused. The newest achievements of these large tidal current turbine technologies are presented. These technologies represent the industrial solutions for several pre-commercial MCT farm projects in the coming years. This paper provides a useful background for researchers in the marine turbine energy domain.