Renewable Energy 91 (2016) 189e195

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Renewable Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/renene

Experimental verification of a floating ocean-current turbine with a

single rotor for use in Kuroshio currents*
Katsutoshi Shirasawa a, *, 1, Kohei Tokunaga b, Hidetsugu Iwashita b, Tsumoru Shintake a
a
Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Onna, Okinawa 904-0495, Japan
b
Graduate School of Engineering, Hiroshima University, 1-4-1 Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima 739-8527, Japan

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Ocean currents have excellent potential as future renewable energy resources. In order to harness the
Received 17 March 2015 kinetic energy of marine currents, we propose a new ocean-current turbine. In general, ocean currents
Received in revised form have sufficiently large cross sections. Thus, the turbines are moored to the seabed and function like kites
2 January 2016
in the water flow. In the future, turbines will be installed approximately 100 m deep to avoid the in-
Accepted 6 January 2016
Available online 28 January 2016
fluence of surface waves; this is especially important during typhoons. To operate such turbines in the
middle layer of a marine current, it is necessary to cancel the resulting rotor torque. Therefore, our
turbine is designed with a float at its top and a counterweight at its bottom. Owing to buoyancy and
Keywords:
Renewable energy
gravity, the turbine maintains a stable position. We describe towing experiments carried out to confirm
Ocean current the float and counterweight configuration and show that the results verify hydrostatic stability and
Ocean-current turbine electric power generation for the proposed turbine.
Ocean energy © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Kuroshio current is an energy resource with only small fluctuations

in flow, regardless of the time of day or the season. As mentioned
There are several different oceanic energy forms: wave, marine above, an ocean-current turbine has many advantages for power
currents, tidal currents, and thermal energy. Many studies are production; these include:
currently being carried out in order to realize commercial operation
worldwide [1,2]. Ocean currents are also a promising source of
Stability
sustainable energy because the flow of water provides regular and
predictable energy. On the other hand, research and development Ocean currents flow constantly.
are difficult technically and potentially costly. However, the de-
mand for renewable energy sources has increased since the
Availability
Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in 2011.
Japan is in a suitable location for harnessing the power of ocean The volume of the water flow is very large.
currents because the Kuroshio ocean current runs steadily near the
Japanese seaside [3]. The Kuroshio current is a strong ocean current
Predictability
in the western North Pacific Ocean. The current flow is approxi-
mately 500 m deep and 100 km wide with a flow speed of 1e1.5 m/s The flow speeds and paths have been investigated thoroughly.
[4e6]. This appears to be a rather slow flow, but it is sufficient for
generating electricity because the density of water is 800 times
No visual impact
higher than that of air. The Kuroshio current has a power density
equivalent to that of a wind flow at 9e14 m/s. Moreover, the The turbine operates beneath the water surface.
Tidal-current turbines have technologies in common with
ocean-current turbines. At the European Marine Energy Centre
*
Fully documented templates are available in the elsarticle package on CTAN. (EMEC), several tidal-current turbine projects are currently un-
* Corresponding author. derway [7]. Most of these projects have adopted horizontal-axis
E-mail address: katsutoshi.shirasawa@oist.jp (K. Shirasawa).
1
turbines mounted onto the seabed. This means that, even though
Since 2012.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2016.01.035
0960-1481/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
190 K. Shirasawa et al. / Renewable Energy 91 (2016) 189e195
the turbines operate underwater, their horizontal-axis nature
makes them efficient. On the other hand, mainly ocean-current
areas such as Japan, Florida (USA) [8], and Taiwan, which face the
Kuroshio current or Gulf stream, have been investigated with a
view to extraction of energy from current flow. Several groups are
developing ocean-current turbines using a floating body moored to
the seabed. The key problem in these systems is how to cancel the
resulting rotor torque. One of the typical methods used to achieve
this cancellation is a twin-turbine system [8e10].
The present work intends to propose a new type of turbine that
utilizes ocean-current power. To realize this power take-off system,
many technical problems have to be solved, e.g., problems related
to installation, cost, maintenance, environment, and electricity
transmission. However, the most essential point is to develop a
robust, efficient, and maintainable turbine. To overcome the above
issues, we propose a new ocean-current turbine.
The structure of this paper is as follows. First, the conceptual
design and energy farm plan are presented. Second, the prototype
turbine is constructed for initial proof-of-principle experiments.
Then, towing tests done at sea are described; these were performed
to verify the stability of the floating body. In addition, turbine
performance measurements carried out in a towing tank are
compared with corresponding numerical results. Finally, conclu-
sions are summarized.
2. Theory
2.1. Ocean-current turbine principle
Ocean currents run through deep areas of the sea. In the case of
the Kuroshio current studied here, its depth is over 500 m. This is a
good example application because it is typical of current flow
depths below the surface. To harvest the energy of an ocean cur-
rent, turbines offer an efficient solution.
To convert the kinetic energy of an ocean current into electricity,
the turbines must operate within the flow. Therefore, they are
moored to the seabed. A schematic diagram of our turbine system is
shown in Fig. 1. The turbines are positioned approximately 100 m
below the surface; because the cross section of the Kuroshio cur-
rent is sufficiently large, they can capture the flow well. Another
advantage of working far from the sea surface is the lack of influ-
ence from waves and wind, especially in a typhoon.
For a wave at sea, fluid particles at a depth equal to half the
wavelength or more are essentially free of wave interference.
Suppose the axis of a turbine is 100 m below the surface and its top
is about 50 m below the surface. In this case, the turbine would be
safe in the presence of wavelengths up to 100 m. In practice,
Sea Level
Turbine
100 m
Ocean Current
Over
Mooring Line 500 m
Sinker Seabed
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of an ocean-current turbine.
operating depth should be decided according to the current profile
and wave assessments. In many environments vortex flows, sea
mammals, fish, and chemicals must also be considered in turbine
installation.
Figure 2 shows the conceptual design of the proposed turbine.
The turbine is equipped with a float at its top and a counterweight
at its bottom. Owing to buoyancy and gravitational force, the tur-
bine body maintains its attitude stably by canceling the rotor tor-
que. In other words, buoyancy and gravity act together as a righting
moment. Of course, this righting moment also provides stability in
pitching motion. As shown in Fig. 2, the condition for stable oper-
ation is expressed as
G sin q þ F sin q > T (1)
where G is the gravitational force on the counterweight, F is the
buoyancy of the float, T is the blade torque, and q is the roll angle.
All forces should be normalized by their distance from the rotor
axis. In this design, a spheroid float is adopted because the drag
should be kept small. In addition, we consider that an axisymmetric
shape is better for suppressing pitching and rolling motions. The
drag coefficient of a spheroid depends on its aspect ratio. All of the
power-generating components, i.e., the electric generator, gear box,
and drive train, are placed in the nacelle.
2.2. Features
Our turbine uses a single horizontal-axis rotor to generate
electricity. Various horizontal- and vertical-axis turbines have been
proposed to extract power from ocean currents (see, for example,
[11]). In general, horizontal-axis turbines have higher power effi-
ciency than vertical-axis turbines.
Another typical method used to cancel undesirable rotor torque
is use of a twin-turbine system [8e10]. Such systems are equipped
with counter-rotating rotors and generators. In the case of a twin-
turbine system, each rotor must be controlled in order to maintain a
balance between torque and thrust. An additional mechanism may
be needed to keep the body stable when the rotor is not in oper-
ation. Our system is always stable owing to its float and counter-
weight configuration. In other words, the functions of electricity
generation and body stabilization are clearly separated in our
design. This allows our design to provide more flexibility than
others. For example, by adding a buoyancy control system to the
float, the operation depth can be set simply to capture the optimum
current. If more body stability is needed, it is realized by increasing
Major Diameter
Buoyancy (F)
Minor Float
Diameter
Nacelle
Ocean Current
1-1.5 m/s
Rotor Blade
Blade Torque (T)
Counterweight Roll ( )
Gravity (G)
(a) Side view (b) Back view
Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of the ocean-current turbine: (a) side view and (b) back
view.
 K. Shirasawa et al. / Renewable Energy 91 (2016) 189e195 191

the buoyancy and counterweight. Of course, the minimum value 10

7

should be decided from the balance equation (1). A single rotor and U = 1.5 m/s
nacelle ensure structural simplicity compared with twin-turbine Efficiency = 35%
6
10
systems. Therefore, we can construct a turbine with a small num-
ber of components. This leads to good maintainability, low cost, and
a low failure rate. For the above reasons, our design is suited to 10
5

Power (W)
realizing higher efficiency and more robust operation than alter-
native turbine systems. 4
10

3
10

2.3. Energy farm concept

Our future plan is to construct “an energy farm under the ocean”
which will generate stable electric power on the order of a giga-
watt. Fig. 3 shows a conception of a future energy farm that utilizes
ocean currents instead of wind. The farm will deploy many large-
scale turbines in a manner similar to a wind-energy farm, except
that the turbines will operate underwater.
The ocean-current power captured by the turbine blade can be
calculated by
1
P¼ rAU 3 CP
2
where r is the sea water density, A is the sweep area, U is the
current speed and CP is the power coefficient of the blade. The
power coefficient of a modern turbine ranges from 0.3 to 0.5 [12].
The total efficiency of the turbine system is degraded by gearing
losses, imperfect electric generator efficiency, electric transmission
losses, and so on. Assuming that the total efficiency is approxi-
mately 35% and that the water flows at 1.5 m/s, the expected power
output for 300 units of 80-m-diameter turbines is 1 GW. The output
power of each turbine is plotted in Fig. 4 as a function of rotor
diameter. From the turbine performance point of view, the distance
between turbines should be large enough to avoid a rotor wake
[13]. However, the Kuroshio current involves high flow, so distance
will be decided by maintainability.
With today's marine technology, the 80-m rotor is very large. In
the EMEC test site, typical horizontal axis turbine has a rotor with a
diameter of 18 m and a rated output power of 1 MW. In the wind
turbine sector, the rotor diameter tends to be larger in order to
improve efficiency. From this efficiency standpoint, the 80-m-
diameter turbine is a reasonable plan for the future. The lifetime
and maintainability of the turbine system are important from the
perspective of economic feasibility. Resolving these issues allows
the “energy farm” concept to be competitive with other energy
sources because ocean currents are predictable and flow constantly.
2
10
1
10
0.1 1 10 100
Turbine Diameter (m)
Fig. 4. Output power of an ocean-current turbine at a flow speed of 1.5 m/s.
3. Methods and materials
(2) As a first step, we constructed a prototype turbine and con-
ducted towing experiments in order to confirm the float and
counterweight configuration.
3.1. Prototype turbine
A photograph of the prototype turbine is shown in Fig. 5. To
reduce construction cost, we modified a commercial wind turbine
whose rated power is 1 kW. The turbine has a 2-m-diameter three-
blade rotor and uses a NACA 642-415 airfoil. The blade originally
had a shell structure made of carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic. In a
water flow, the drag force on the turbine is considerably larger
compared with that in an air flow. Therefore, the blades were
reinforced by filling them with a polyester resin. In addition, a
metal shaft was added in the spar direction. The designed tip speed
ratio (TSR) is four for a wind speed of 12 m/s. At the TSR, the CP is a
maximum. The TSR is defined as
UR
TSR ¼ (3)
U
where U is the rotation speed of the blade and R is the radius of the
turbine rotor. The main parameters are listed in Table 1.
The prototype turbine operated in sea water during the towing
experiments. Therefore, the nacelle was modified to maintain
watertightness. A permanent-magnet synchronous generator is
housed within the nacelle. Its rated output power is 1 kW at a
rotational speed of 458 rpm. In the original design, the generator
was driven directly by the turbine. However, turbine rotation is
slow in water; therefore, a step-up gear was installed to increase
the generator rotation speed. In order to obtain the equivalent
power of a wind flow at 12 m/s, the speed of the sea water flow
must be 1.27 m/s. This speed difference is caused by the fluid
density: sea water is more than 850 times denser than air.
Considering that density r has a reciprocal cube root relationship
with the speed U, the cube root of 850 is approximately 10, which
explains this difference in speed. The power of a fluid flowing at
speed U through an area A can be calculated by

1
Pfluid ¼ rAU 3 (4)
2
Fig. 3. Computer visualization of an energy farm consisting of ocean-current turbines.
192 K. Shirasawa et al. / Renewable Energy 91 (2016) 189e195

At the top of the turbine, a white float in the shape of a spheroid

with a minor diameter (Dfloat) of 0.2 m and a major diameter (Lfloat)
of 1 m was attached. The definition of the diameters is shown in
Fig. 2. This float must generate buoyancy and have a low-drag
shape. To realize low drag force, the aspect ratio Lfloat/Dfloat should
be large. However, the float needed to have sufficient thickness in
order to implement a strong structure because it acts to create part
of the righting moment. In our aspect ratio case, the drag coefficient
is 0.1 in turbulent flows (Re2  106) [14]. The float's interior
structure is comprised of ribs and spars and an FRP forms its outer
shell. For waterproofing, the float is filled with a hard sponge that
does not absorb water. The float's weight is 28 kg in air, and its
volume is approximately 0.1 m3. As a result, this float generates a
buoyancy of approximately 75 kgf in sea water.
The counterweight is hung from the nacelle by a stainless-steel
rod. Its buoyancy and weight were determined to satisfy q<5 . In
addition, an iron weight was adjusted to make the entire turbine
system slightly positively buoyant.

3.2. Towing experiment at sea

To demonstrate the principle of our turbine system, towing

Fig. 5. Photograph of the prototype turbine.
experiments were conducted at sea. The turbine was attached with
a strut to a small fishing boat and towed to simulate an ocean
current. A schematic diagram of the experimental setup is shown in
Fig. 6. Before towing, part of the float was slightly above the sea
surface. The depth of the towing point was 2 m below the surface.
The tow rope was connected to the float and nacelle. In order for
the turbine to operate in water, the rope connected to the float had
a forward-bent posture.
The output cable from the electric generator was connected to a
resistive load on the boat. The electrical output was rectified from
three-phase AC to DC. The voltage and current of the load were then
measured to determine output power. Fig. 7 shows the measure-
ment setup used to obtain electric power. The tow speed was
increased up to 1 m/s as measured by a GPS device aboard the
fishing boat. During the towing experiments, a slight overpressure
relative to the ambient pressure was applied to the inside of the
nacelle to avoid penetration by sea water.

3.3. Towing tank test

Table 1
Parameters of the prototype turbine.
Results of the towing experiment at sea (described in the
Rotor diameter 2m following section) verify the design of our turbine. However, it was
Number of blades 3
Tip speed ratio (design) 4
difficult to measure performance under various conditions because
CP (max.) 0.42 the measurements were influenced by surface waves and small
Float volume 0.1 m3 currents in the real sea field. Therefore, the towing experiment was
Counterweight (in air) 50 kg (Iron) also conducted in a towing tank in order to measure power effi-
ciency precisely. Ours is a downwind-type turbine; therefore, it is
Electric generator (Specification)
important to investigate the influence originating from structures
Rated power 1 kW (three-phase AC)
Rated rotation 458 rpm upstream.
Torque (max.) 20 N$m The electrical generation and thrust characteristics of the pro-
Number of magnetic rotor poles 16 totype turbine were measured at a constant towing speed. This
experiment was carried out in the towing tank at the Research
Institute for Applied Mechanics at Kyushu University. The tank has
In this case, the Reynolds numbers based on the turbine diam- a length of 65 m, a breadth of 5 m, and a depth of 7 m. A schematic
eter are 1.6  106 in the wind and 2.4  106 in the sea water: these diagram of the experimental setup is shown in Fig. 8. A tow strut
are of the same order. Consequently, the optimum TSR for the was attached to the towing carriage. The power measurement
seawater flow is equal to that for the wind case. The relevant pa- system was the same as that used in Fig. 7. However, the load was
rameters are summarized in Table 2. Therefore, the step-up ratio changed to 10 U because the turbine was designed for a higher
should be approximately 10; however, a ratio of 3.5 was chosen rotational speed. A load cell was positioned in the middle of the
instead because of space constraints. To save construction cost, we towing line to measure the tension.
mounted a simple spur gear, although the ideal step-up ratio was We designed a turbine for this experiment using the blade
difficult to achieve using this gear. element momentum (BEM) method [15,16] for which the blade
parameters are listed in Table 3. The twist and chord distributions
 K. Shirasawa et al. / Renewable Energy 91 (2016) 189e195 193

Table 2
Reynolds numbers and fluid-related parameters at operating conditions.

Wind Sea water

Flow speed (U) m/s 12 1.27

Characteristic length (L) m 2
Kinematic viscosity (n, 20  C) m2/s 1.501  105 1.054  106
Density (r, 20  C) kg/m3 1.204 1024.7
Reynolds number (Re) 1.6  106 2.4  106

(a) Top view Table 3

Parameters of the blade for the towing tank test.

Rotor diameter 1.46 m

Tip speed ratio 4
Number of blades 3
CP(max.) 0.43
CT(max.) 0.63
Airfoil NACA 642-415
Material ABS resin

Fishing Boat Tow Strut Tow Line

Turbine
(b) Side view

Sea Level

2m
4m

Fig. 6. Schematic diagram of the towing experiments at sea. In the top view (a), the
float is omitted for simplicity.

Water Flow Rotor Blade

Cable 35m
Electric V
Generator

Oscilloscope Load
(Voltage Probe) Rectifier (7 )
Gear AC3 DC
1 : 3.5 (20 : 70) Fig. 9. Twist and chord distributions of the 1.46-m-diameter rotor used in the towing
tank test.
On the Fishing Boat

Fig. 7. Measurement setup of the towing experiments at sea.

are plotted in Fig. 10 as functions of TSR. CP and CT are given by

0.8

CP
CT
0.6
CP, CT

0.4

0.2

Fig. 8. Experimental setup for the towing tank test.

0.0
2 3 4 5 6 7 8

along the radial direction are shown in Fig. 9. The lift and drag TSR
coefficient data for blade elements were derived by the 2-D panel Fig. 10. Power coefficient (CP) and thrust coefficient (CT) calculated for a water flow of
code XFOIL [17]. The calculated CP and CT for a water flow of 1.2 m/s 1.2 m/s.
194 K. Shirasawa et al. / Renewable Energy 91 (2016) 189e195

500

Calculation
Measurement
400

Generator Output (W)

300

200

100
Fig. 11. Output voltage of the electric generator during the towing test. This waveform
shows the voltage between one phase and ground.

0
0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2

Towing Speed (m/s)

P
CP ¼ 1 (5)
2 rAU
3 Fig. 14. Measured generator output for the towing tank test.

4. Results and discussion

4.1. Towing experiment at sea

Figure 11 shows the AC voltage waveform of the electric

Fig. 12. Photograph taken by a diver of the prototype turbine during the towing
experiment at sea.
generator. The rotational speed of the rotor blade was approxi-
mately 60 rpm, and the fluctuation in the voltage amplitude was
small. In this experiment, although we did not prepare a device to
measure turbine posture directly, such as an accelerometer,
stable power generation indicates that hydrostatic stability
was high.
The measured power of the load reached a maximum of
400 W at the towing speed of 1 m/s. The TSR was approximately
seven, which is in good agreement with the theoretical estimate.
From the turbine performance point of view, the TSR of seven was
not optimal. This was caused by the low step-up ratio of the gear. In
addition, a stable body attitude and output power were observed. A
photograph of the towing experiment is shown in Figs. 12 and 13
(see also Movie 1 available online).
Supplementary video related to this article can be found at
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2016.01.035.

T
CT ¼ 1 (6)
2 rAU 2
900

Drag Force of the Turbine (Calculation)

where T is the thrust force of the turbine.
800 Towing Line Tension (Measurement)

700
Force (N)

600

500

400

300

200
0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.2

Towing Speed (m/s)

Fig. 13. Movie still (available online) of the prototype turbine during the towing
experiment at sea. Fig. 15. Measured towing line tension for the towing tank test.
 K. Shirasawa et al. / Renewable Energy 91 (2016) 189e195
4.2. Towing tank test
Measurements were performed at towing speeds ranging from
0.7 m/s to 1.2 m/s. The measured electric power is shown in Fig. 14.
The calculations account for the properties of the generator and are
in good agreement with measurements. No degradation in turbine
performance was observed. In addition, the measured line tension
is plotted in Fig. 15 as a function of the towing speed. The line in this
figure is a calculation of the drag force of only the turbine. There-
fore, the difference between this line and the measurements in-
dicates that drag forces also originate from the float, the
counterweight, and other parts. We calculated the power and drag
force using the BEM method mentioned in the previous section.
Consequently, we confirmed that the turbine worked as designed.
5. Conclusion
In this paper we have proposed a new marine-current turbine to
harness the kinetic energy of currents at sea. Operating in the
middle layer of a marine current, the turbine avoids the influence of
waves and wind. The turbine has a float at its top and a weight at its
bottom to cancel the rotor torque developed during operation. In
order to verify our turbine system's float and counterweight
configuration, we performed towing experiments at sea and in a
laboratory towing tank. The experimental results demonstrate that
our ocean-current turbine has a high hydrostatic stability and
achieves stable power generation. In future work, we will perform
computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis to optimize the entire
turbine system. For this purpose, investigations of ocean currents
are important in defining realistic turbine operating conditions.
Acknowledgments
The Nikko Company provided the blade parameters for our
research. Mr. Ohba and Mr. Toda of the Okinawa Institute of Science
and Technology supported us in carrying out the towing experiment
at sea. Towing tank experiments were supported in part by the
Collaborative Research Program of the Research Institute for Applied
Mechanics, Kyushu University. This work was supported by the
Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University.
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