A Control strategy to improve the efficiency of point absorber wave energy converters in complex sea environments

Abstract

Fuat Kara

A discrete control of latching is used to increase the bandwidth of the efficiency of the Wave Energy Converters (WEC) in regular and irregular seas. When latching control applied to WEC it increases the amplitude of the motion as well as absorbed power. It is assumed that the exciting force is known in the close future and that body is hold in position during the latching time. A heaving vertical-cylinder as a point-absorber WEC is used for the numerical prediction of the different parameters. The absorbed maximum power from the sea is achieved with a three-dimensional panel method using Neumann-Kelvin approximation in which the exact initial-boundary-value problem is linearized about a uniform flow, and recast as an integral equation using the transient free-surface Green function. The calculated response amplitude operator, absorbed power, relative capture width, and efficiency of vertical-cylinder compared with analytical results.

PDF