Optimal planning of the barrage type tidal power plants equipped to the hydro-pumps

Among different renewable energy-based power plants, barrage type tidal power plants with high installed capacity can be integrated in the bulk power systems. However, due to the high investment cost associated to the construction of the barrages and related components, barrage type tidal power plants are less developed than other renewable resources such as wind turbines and photovoltaic farms. In order to economize the production of electricity from barrage type tidal power plants, it is necessary to reduce the cost of generated electricity by these power plants with new methods. For this purpose, the plant is considered to generate the electricity in the ebb mode, and using the hydro-pumps the height of the water in the reservoir is increased in the flood state. Based on this fact, in this paper, to maximize the generated energy of the barrage type tidal power plant, an optimal design is proposed and the effective parameters of the plant including the number of turbines, the number and width of the sluices, the turbine diameters and the number of hydro-pumps are determined using of three optimization techniques including particle swarm optimization method, genetic algorithm and imperial competition algorithm.

Automated summary

Barrage type tidal power plants with high installed capacity can be integrated into bulk power systems, but their development is hindered by high investment costs. In order to reduce electricity generation costs, this paper proposes an optimal design for maximizing energy generation of barrage type tidal power plants using three optimization techniques.