Development Of Preliminary Design For Tidal Power Plant At Kuching Barrage

• Main Author: Norman Baggio, Francis
• Format: Final Year Project Report
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) 2018
• Subjects: TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/33690/4/Norman%20Baggio.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/33690/

This Final Year Project report describes the necessities of tidal energy and operation of existing tidal power plants across the globe. There are thousands of operating tidal power plants in the world because tidal energy harnessing is one of the methods to overcome the issues of fossil fuels shortage. This report also introduces Kuching Barrage, a flood mitigation system located in Kuching, Sarawak. It has the potential to become a tidal power plant. There are plans and studies conducted by local researchers to convert the barrage from a flood mitigation system to a functional tidal power plant. However, the idea has never been approved by the government due to internal reasons. Therefore, this project is introduced in hopes that the government will eventually approve of the idea. There are four objectives in this project, which are to determine the mean tidal range and potential annual power output at Kuching Barrage, to select the best type of tidal turbine for the proposed tidal power plant, to study all the parameters of the selected turbine, as well as to perform a numerical analysis on the gate opening for varying tide levels. Based on the main findings, all the objectives are successfully achieved, although there is some undesired result. Hence, a recommendation is suggested to overcome the unexpected engineering hurdle.