Hydro Power Tower (HYPOT)

Abstract

Humanity has used the power of falling water for centuries to produce electrical energy, but there have been no significant changes in technology. Marine Energy has received an explosive development. Traditional technologies are passive and have low efficiency. It is not possible to use the effect of falling water in the ocean. The chapter considers the technology, which allows to convert not only the kinetic energy of a moving horizontal flow, but also the potential energy of water hammer in a combination of pressure drop between layers of water that have different hydrodynamic characteristics. This is a high efficiency due to the use of the Pitot-Prandtl tube principle and Bernoulli’s law and in combination with the effect of raising the water of the hydraulic ram. The calculations are based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods. It is known that 94% of incoming solar energy is converted into underwater currents and only 6% - on the surface. Therefore, the proposed technology can be highly competitive in relation for example to Orbital Marine Power (OMP) project and another known offshore wind and wave power plants which convert only the kinetic energy of the surface air and sea currents.