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Technical Assignment Briefing : Tidal Mill

RE4S010
Hydro, Tidal, Wave, and Wind

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Technical Assignment
• The Hambleton tidal lagoon will make use of a disused tidal millpond close to Morecombe
bay. The millpond is connected to the turbine house via an 8 m long penstock, with the
turbine to reside 1.5 m below the bottom of the millpond. The millpond has vertical sides, a
surface area of 47,250 m2, a total possible depth of 6 m, and is flat bottomed with the bottom
3 m above the low tide level. There is 8 days worth of tidal data for the millpond (see tidal
resource spreadsheet on Blackboard.)
• You should also make use of the following assumptions and constraints:

a) The penstock can be built such that it is straight.

b) Pipe losses in the penstock should account for no more than 5% of the gross available head.
c) You must include a trash rack at the entrance to the penstock with a bar spacing of 25 mm.
d) The tidal data provided for 8 days can be extrapolated to a whole year.
e) Information on costs of small scale tidal-schemes and turbines can be assumed similar to
those for small scale hydro-schemes and turbines.

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Tidal Mill Calculations

• We can carry out an analysis in a similar way to that for tidal
barrages and pumped hydro storage schemes.
• We will use a 0D model
• We will make some assumptions
• Vertical sided mill pond
• Flat bottomed mill pond
• The bottom of the mill pond is some distance above the low tide mark
• The turbine is set beneath the bottom of the mill pond and above the
low tide mark

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Tidal Mill Calculations

• We can visualise the
mill pond like this
• With D
• R = tidal range
• D = depth of mill
pond when full R
• Ht = The drop to the Ht
turbine

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Tidal Mill Calculations

• First plot the data to make sure
that it is as expected.
• Look for:
• Discontinuities
• Outliers
• Missing values
• Availability of metadata

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Tidal Mill Calculations

• We want to do two things:
• Determine the appropriate capacity of the turbine.
• Determine the annual energy yield
• We need to
• Determine the available head during each tidal cycle
• Determine the time available for generation during
each tidal cycle.
• Determine the volumetric flow rate during each tidal
cycle.
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Define operational scheme

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Tidal Mill Calculations

• Our first step is to estimate the length of time available for
generation in each cycle.
• We need to:
• Adjust the tidal data to include the base level of the mill
pond.
• Determine the length of time that the tide height is beneath
the base level of the mill pond.
• This will be our estimate of the time available for
generation in each cycle

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Tidal Mill Calculations

• Excel can be used to set the base

level of the tidal mill
• An ‘IF’ function is one way to do this
• Excel can be used to estimate the
length of time in seconds that we
have available for generation
18000 s
• The ‘COUNTIF’ function is one way to
do this

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Tidal Mill Calculation

• Estimate the maximum power output during the cycle
• i.e. the required rated power of the turbine/generator
• This will occur when the available head is highest.
• Assume
• The volumetric flow rate for an individual cycle is constant
• The maximum head is at the start of generation

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Tidal Mill Calculation

dD
dt
• Estimate the velocity of the
falling water
• This can be done in the
same way as for a tidal
barrage

• Use Q = AV to find the

volumetric flowrate of the
water.
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Tidal Mill Calculation

• Where
D
• D is the depth of water in the R
water in the millpond at the Ht
start of generation
• Ht is the additional drop to the
turbine setting level
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Tidal Mill Calculations

• To find the energy yield of a

given tidal cycle we can treat the
mill pond in the same way we
might treat a pumped storage D
hydro scheme while generating.
R
Ht

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Tidal Mill Calculations

• Don’t forget to include the losses!
• Think about where the losses are generated within the system
and apply them there!

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