The Research and Development Division of EDF (EDF R&D) contributes to the development of a novel technique for power generation using the kinetic energy of tidal streams, still called marine current energy through numerical modelling and experimental measurements at sea. EDF improves its knowledge of the French potential tidal sites and also its capacity to evaluate the various technologies and concepts some of which could become industrial tomorrow.
This paper deals with the wake effect which appears as problematic when introducing the concept of farm of marine current converters, or when trying to estimate the reasonable maximum amount of energy that could be extracted from a given area.
The design of a complete Marine Current Energy Converters (MCEC) farm requires to be able to predict the main interactions that can occur between converters and tidal currents. Indeed, the converters take a part of the energy of the currents and then they have an influence on them in their vicinity. Effects of shear stress and diffusion can be responsible for a dramatic decrease of momentum in the converter’s wake.
