Probabilistic modeling of tidal power generation

A probability distribution model of tidal generation power is needed to perform reliability assessment and other probabilistic analyses of a power system with tidal sources. This paper proposes a Wakeby distribution to model the probabilistic characteristic of tidal current speed. Wakeby and other four popular distributions are investigated using four years of tidal current data at five sites. The statistical tests and comparison analyses indicate that the Wakeby distribution has the best goodness-of-fit performance for all the tidal current speed data collected. Although seawater temperature is also a random variable, its impact on tidal power is found to be minimal. The results also indicate that a deterministic average tidal current speed model can lead to significant errors in the calculation of tidal power compared to the proposed probabilistic model.