Ocean Current

The research on ocean current energy has not been well developed as that of other ocean energy. But it has the tendency of increasing in recent years, in particular the attention from EC.

The countries to develop the ocean current energy in the world mainly include US, England, Canada, Japan, Italy and China. From 1970s, Heshijian in China voluntarily conducted the research and development of ocean current energy, and built a pilot device by only several thousand Yuan, which obtained an electricity output of 6.3kW.

In the early of 1980s, a type of innovative vertical vane current turbine was developed by Haerbin Engineering University, and obtained higher efficiency. In 1984, 60W modeling experiment research was conducted. After that, kW scale device was developed and tested on the river. 

In 1985, US also conducted a small-scale current turbine experiment in Mexico Bay of Florida. 2kW device was suspended in a place 50m below the research ship.

Canada also conducted an experiment on vertical current turbine with 5kW pilot set. But the most successful current projects in the whole 1980s may be the lifting experiment in the river conducted by a diameter of 3m in Japan university from 1980 to 1982, and another current generator set continuously operated for nearly 1 year with the installed diameter of 1.5m in the sea floor and installed capacity of 3.5kW. 

Since 1990s, EC and China also scheduled to build current energy demonstration power station. Projects, which will be tackled in the eighth and night five-year period in China, will extend support for the ocean current energy. Right now, Haerbin Engineering University is implementing the construction of 75kW ocean current power station. Under the support of EC, Italy has completed its 40kW demonstration device and developed current energy resources investigation in Zhoushan cooperated with China and scheduled to develop 140kW demonstration power station. Now, the program comparison analysis is implementing including the one single-rotor schedule with the diameter of 15m and two twin-rotor schedule with the diameter of 10.5m. 

The utilization research on current energy has achieved great progress in the field of design and manufacturing of turbine, technology of device anticorrosion and installation, mooring and fixing under the water. The energy conversion efficiency of current turbine has exceeding 30%. China utilizes the shipping technology to develop the floating body suspending device. England utilizes the hydropower technology to develop the fixed horizontal axes device in the sea floor.