Turbine Design and Reliability
Facilitating Marine Hydrokinetic Energy Generator Replacement
Led by
William Baxley, MS, PE
Affiliated Home Campus: Harbor Branch
Affiliated Department: Southeast National Marine Renewable Energy Center
PROJECT
Generating marine hydrokinetic energy is a concept that has been proven to be a valuable source of renewable energy. Some obstacles that keep it from working in a large scale include the operational and maintenance costs. This project aims to solve these problems by using a mechanism that allows a generator rotor to be removed from an array of generators without interfering with the other generators instead of having to remove a whole system for maintenance. This mechanism would eject the generator that requires maintenance and be grabbed by an ROV (remotely operated vehicle) in order to be replaced. Additionally, a grabber claw was designed specifically for the rotor to facilitate removal with the ROV. The final portion of the project focused on a system that kept an array of these rotors together. It rotates in order to give access to the generator requiring maintenance.
