Financial assessment
The Figure above displays a comparison between the expected annual revenue for each of the analysed cases. In table below the revenue drops from operating at various levels of surface degradation that deviate from the clean case are displayed.
Degradation Type |
Revenue Drop from Clean Case (£) |
Root Deg |
1,402 |
Root-Mid Deg |
37,444 |
Mid-Tip Deg |
456,482 |
Full deg |
644,006 |
From a prevention and maintenance point of view, it is clear that if a developer allows the blades of their turbines to become significantly degraded, by some means, they can expected to loose a significant amount of revenue. This reinforces the outcomes of other studies which suggest that blade surface degradation is likely to be a significant issue regarding the performance of tidal current devices.
It is our opinion that operators should address this issue by investing in protection and maintenance schemes for preserving their blades. These may come in the form of protective coatings, and/or, the use of innovative fouling resistant materials. These are further discussed in the following section.
Degradation at the root section only contributes 0.2% of the total lost revenue of a fully degraded blade; therefore, an operator may only need to protect the outer sections of their blades to maintain performance and reduce their overall maintenance costs.
