Sea-Floor Power Generation System

Ocean currents represent a potentially significant, currently untapped, resource of energy. The total worldwide power in ocean currents has been estimated to be about 5,000 GW, with power densities of up to 15 kW/m2. In the paper we describe a micro sea-floor power generation system being designed and developed at Electrical Energy System Lab, Memorial University of Newfoundland. The ocean current data around Newfoundland shows a significantly low non-tidal ocean current speed (in the range of 0.11-0.15m/s) at various depths. We would like to extract few watts electrical from the sea-floor ocean current. The produced power is required for the data processing computer and signal conditioning circuits of sea-floor instrumentation. The proposed power generation system will consist of a spiral shape drag type turbine rotor, a low rpm generator, batteries for energy storage, a controlled DC-DC converter, instrumentation and a micro controller based control system for the turbine. This paper describes progress made so far. We present some ocean current data, design and lab test results of our first proto-type sea-floor power generation system.