Aspects of control and system design for hydrokinetic turbines

水力涡轮机从流动的水源(如河流、潮汐水流或工业流程的污水)中获取能量，并将其转化为电力。因此，这些涡轮机是环保的，使用可再生能源，基本上没有碳足迹。因此，这些系统的开发可以被认为对加拿大和世界都有很高的价值。此外，在现有流程中实施水力涡轮机的经济效益可能是显著的。这些类型的涡轮机系统中的一个主要问题是维持稳定的发电供应，以最大限度地提高从流量源提取的功率。为了准确地实现这些结果，需要进行优化控制。拟议的工作包括开发和改进水力涡轮机的控制技术，包括垂直轴松鼠笼形设计，其中涡轮机垂直于水流旋转，叶片基本上是翼状表面。这种设计的优点是与流向无关，易于启动。主要的控制挑战包括尽管驱动流发生变化(例如反向潮汐流)，但仍保持一致的行为和性能，以及处理叶片因旋转进入和离开流动而产生的不同扭矩。建议使用一种控制类型，该控制类型根据外部流动条件(通过数学处理推断)而变化，同时限制扭矩脉动。这可以通过使用最先进的优化目标和解决方案技术的高级配方来实现，也可以使用系统对不同因素的适应来实现。这项工作是对风力涡轮机行业现有成果的补充，但也有其独特的挑战，包括测量水速(由于污垢、极端天气和碎片堆积)、更大的力和扭矩(由于水与空气相比的能量密度)以及有限的应用量(因为河流和水道通常很小)。该项目的成果将是迈向水力涡轮机用于发电的主流缪斯的重要一步。

Hydrokinetic turbines take energy from flowing water sources, such as rivers, tidal flows, or effluent from industrial processes, and convert this into electricity. As such these turbines are environmentally friendly, involve a renewable energy source and have essentially zero carbon footprint. Thus development of these systems can be considered of very high value to Canada and the world. Moreover, the economic benefit of implementing a hydrokinetic turbine in an existing flow can be significant. A major issue in these type of turbine systems is maintenance of a consistent supply of generated electricity which maximizes the power extracted from the flow source. In order to achieve precisely these results, an optimizing control is needed. The proposed work involves the development and refinement of control techniques for hydrokinetic turbines involving a vertical axis squirrel cage design where the turbine spins perpendicular to the flow and the blades are essentially wing-like surfaces. Advantages of this design are independence of flow direction and ease of start-up. The main control challenges involve maintaining consistent behaviour and performance despite changes in the driving flow (such as in reversing tidal flows), and dealing with varying torque in the blades due to their rotation into and out of the flow. It is proposed to use a type of control that varies according to the external flow conditions (as inferred by mathematical processing) and at the same time limits the torque pulsation. This can be realized with advanced formulations using state of the art optimizing goals and solution techniques, and also using adaptation of the system to the varying factors. The work complements existing results in the wind turbine industry, but has its unique challenges including measuring of the water speed (due to fouling, extreme weather, and debris build-up), much larger forces and torques (due to the energy density of water as compared to air) and limited application volumes (in that rivers and channels are generally small). The results of this project will be a major step forward towards the mainstream muse of hydrokinetic turbines for electrical power generation.