Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Station is the world's largest
tidal power
Tidal power or tidal energy is harnessed by converting energy from tides into useful forms of power, mainly electricity using various methods.
Although not yet widely used, tidal energy has the potential for future electricity generation. ...
installation, with a total power output capacity of 254
MW. When completed in 2011, it surpassed the 240 MW
Rance Tidal Power Station
The Rance Tidal Power Station is a tidal power station located on the estuary of the Rance River in Brittany, France.
Opened in 1966 as the world's first tidal power station, it is currently operated by Électricité de France and was for 45 y ...
which was the world's largest for 45 years. It is operated by the
Korea Water Resources Corporation.
Design
The
tidal barrage makes use of a
seawall constructed in 1994 for flood mitigation and agricultural purposes.
Ten 25.4 MW submerged bulb
turbine
A turbine ( or ) (from the Greek , ''tyrbē'', or Latin ''turbo'', meaning vortex) is a rotary mechanical device that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful work. The work produced by a turbine can be used for generating ...
s are driven in an unpumped
flood generation scheme; power is generated on tidal inflows only, and the outflow is sluiced away, i.e. as one-way power generation.
This slightly unconventional and relatively inefficient approach has been chosen to balance a complex mix of existing land use, water use, conservation, environmental and power generation considerations.
[Tidal power primed for breakthrough]
waterpowermagazine.com
The station's mean operating tidal range is , with a
spring tidal range of . The working basin area was originally intended to be and has been reduced by land reclamation and freshwater dykes to , likely to be reduced further.
Construction
The power station was built in 2011 and started to operate in 2012.
[ The project cost US$560 million was borne by the ]South Korean Government
The Government of South Korea is the union government of the Republic of Korea, created by the Constitution of South Korea as the executive, legislative and judicial authority of the republic. The president acts as the head of state and is th ...
.[https://www.hydropower.org/blog/technology-case-study-sihwa-lake-tidal-power-station , year=2016][Hunt for African Projects]
Newsworld Korea, 2009,
Environmental context
After the seawall was built in 1994, pollution built up in the newly created Sihwa Lake reservoir
A reservoir (; from French ''réservoir'' ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam. Such a dam may be either artificial, built to store fresh water or it may be a natural formation.
Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including contr ...
, making its water useless for agriculture.[Nohyoung Park (May 2007]
Sihwa Tidal Power Plant: a success of environment and energy policy in Korea
Korea University, www.eer.wustl.edu, retrieved 30 May 2016 Concentrations of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS
Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) (conjugate base perfluorooctanesulfonate) is a chemical compound having an eight- carbon fluorocarbon chain and a sulfonic acid functional group and thus a perfluorosulfonic acid. It is an anthropogenic (man-m ...
) measured in Lake Sihwa were among the greatest ever measured in the environment.[
]
Picture
Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Station 05.jpg, Identity
Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Station 02.png, Vertical photo
Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Station 04.jpg, Control room
See also
* List of largest power stations in the world
* List of power stations in South Korea
* List of tidal power stations
This article lists most power stations that run on tidal power. Since tidal stream generators are an immature technology, no technology has yet emerged as the clear standard. A large variety of designs are being experimented with, with some very ...
Notes
{{reflist
References
World’s Largest Tidal Power Plant–Shihwa Lake in Korea http://energy.korea.com/archives/6887
Energy infrastructure completed in 2011
Tidal power stations in South Korea
Tidal barrages
Buildings and structures in Gyeonggi Province