Numerical modeling for in-stream hydrokinetic resources assessment

Abstract

"During recent years the viability of extracting river energy using hydrokinetic devices became a topic that brought in national attention due to higher fuel costs, and an increased demand of electric energy. A tool for hydrokinetic energy potential assessment in rivers, HYDROKAL, which stands for Hydrokinetic Calculator, was developed. This tool was generated in Fortran 90 programming language as an external module for the CCHE2D, an existing two-dimensional hydrodynamic numerical model developed by researchers at the National Center for Computational Hydroscience and Engineering, University of Mississippi. Velocity outputs generated by the CCHE2D model are used by HYDROKAL to estimate instantaneous power density, an essential element in calculating the hydrokinetic power of a river. For each model cross section, maximum velocity and specific discharge are also identified. These maximum values could provide insights on the stability of the river reach and, thus, the feasibility of installing an in-stream turbine. A Python script is provided to allow the export of results from HYDROKAL to CCHE2D. HYDROKAL was applied on a Tanana River reach near Nenana, AK, where the possibility of installing an in-stream device is being explored. River velocities obtained from an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler were used to validate the model"--Leaf iii.