Analysis of Operating Characteristics in Tidal Power Generation According to Tide Level

Tidal power generation plays a critical role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It uses a tidal force generated by gravitational force between the moon, the earth, and the sun. The change of seawater height generates the tide-generating force, and the magnitude of the change is the tide level. The tide level change has the same period as the tide-generating force twice a day, every 29.5 days, every year, and every 18.6 years. Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Station is Korea's first tidal power plant that began commercial power generation in August 2011 and has been accumulating a large volume of data on electricity production, power generation sales, sluice displacement, and tide levels. The purpose of this paper was to analyze the impact of the inefficiency factors affecting production and the tidal level change on tidal power generation and their characteristics using Sihwa Lake Tidal Power's operational performance data. Throughout this paper we show that tidal power generating operation is accurately predicting the trends of magnitude of tidal force to be periodical for each day. determining the drop to initiate the water turbine generator factoring the constraints on the operation of Sihwa Lake, and reflecting the water discharge through the floodgate and water turbine during the standby mode in the power generation plan to be in the optimal condition until the initiation of the next power generation can maximize power generation.