Systematic Design of a Composite Tidal Turbine Blade and Evaluation of Tidal Energy Based on Ecologic and Economic Factors

Energy generation nowadays is still highly dependent on fossil fuels, even though they have adverse environmental impact and their resources are limited. Renewable energy technologies are starting to be introduced in the energy market but further improvements are still needed in that field. Among them, tidal energy has the advantage of being highly predictable. However, it is still in its infancy. To assess whether it is worth to develop this kind of technology, a literature search has been conducted to evaluate the cost of energy (COE) and the emission of greenhouse-gases (GHG) through the whole life-cycle. These values have been compared with the COE and GHG emissions for other sources of energy. Results show that tidal energy can be economically feasible if it were properly developed since its cost is mainly driven by initial capital expenditures. One of the specific identified challenges for its deployment is the establishment of suitable manufacturing methods. To address this issue, a blade for a tidal turbine has been designed using open-source software (QBlade and HARP_Opt). The blade will be subject to future studies in order to derive manufacturing requirements and constraints