Tidal Distortion as Pertains to Hydrokinetic Turbine Selection and Resource Assessment

Synthetic M2 and M4 velocity signals with differing relative phase, are quantified by the statistical parameters skewness and asymmetry, to observe the effect of tidal distortion on available and technical energy for hydrokinetic tidal power operations. Signals with high magnitudes of skewness have a bimodal velocity probability distribution. Asymmetric and non-distorted signals with zero skewness have singular peak values. For velocities time series with the same signal energy, such discrepancies does little to change the available kinetic energy. However, upon the application of turbine efficiency curves, technical energy output between signals with varying skewness varies up to 15%. Such discrepancies in energy outputs highlights the importance of phase, tidal distortion, and skewness for technical resource assessments