HOMER Pro 3.16

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The Hydrokinetic page allows you to choose the type of hydrokinetic installation you want to model, specify its costs, and tell HOMER how many to consider as it searches for the optimal system. You can also view and modify the power curve of the hydrokinetic turbine in the lower portion of the page.

The Hydrokinetic Component can represent several different types of low-head hydro power generation, including run-of-the-river, tidal, and wave energy electric generation. It is described as a turbine, but the Hydrokinetic Component can also represent other technologies, such as a wave energy converter. For a Hydrokinetic Component, you must specify the Hydrokinetic Resource.

Turbine Type

The Hydrokinetic drop-down menu at the top of the Hydrokinetic Set Up page contains all the Hydrokinetic component types stored in your Component Library. Choose an appropriate model from this list. The selected turbine's properties appear in the space below.

Costs

In the Costs table, the capital cost is the initial purchase price for a turbine, the replacement cost is the cost of replacing the turbine at the end of its lifetime, and the operating and maintenance (O&M) cost is the annual cost of operating and maintaining the turbine. Click the Click to add new item option to add more rows to the table.

Cost Curve

In the Costs table, enter the turbine's cost curve in as much detail as you want. In the simplest case, where each turbine costs the same regardless of how many you purchase, you only need to enter one row of data in the Costs table. Enter a quantity of one, along with the per-turbine capital, replacement, and operating and maintenance costs. HOMER extrapolates these costs as needed, so if you were to model a system with three turbines, the associated capital, replacement, and O&M costs would be three times the values entered in the cost table.

If the cost of power is not directly proportional to the number of turbines purchased, enter multiple rows of data in the Costs table. In the example above, the second turbine is less expensive than the first (possibly due to a volume discount from the manufacturer or because certain fixed costs can be spread over multiple turbines). With these two rows specified, HOMER extrapolates the costs by assuming that the third, fourth, and subsequent turbines cost the same as the second. If the third turbine is even less expensive, add another row of costs.

Quantity Optimization

Enter the quantity of turbines you want or enter several quantities for HOMER to consider in the system optimization. Include a zero if you want HOMER to consider systems without this hydrokinetic turbine.

Electrical Bus

Select whether the turbine produces AC or DC power. Power electronics are not modeled explicitly, but you can account for a dedicated converter efficiency by scaling the power curve.

Site Specific Input

Note: To the right of each numerical input is a sensitivity button () that allows you to do a sensitivity analysis on that variable. For more information, see Why Would I Do a Sensitivity Analysis?

Power Curve

The Hydrokinetic Turbine Power Curve allows you to view the power curve of the selected turbine model in both tabular and graphical form. A turbine's power curve shows how much power it produces depending on the water speed. Use this graph to verify that the turbine you selected is an appropriate size for your system.

Manufacturer Properties

The Manufacturer Properties section displays basic information for the turbine model you have selected.

See also

Hydrokinetic Resource

Hydrokinetic Library

Component Library