There is a continuing and increasing need to develop renewable energy technologies that are efficient, cost-effective and produce usable forms of energy. Wave energy converters (WECs) have an opportunity to play a key and significant role in the integration of renewable energy technologies on a commercial scale.
It is estimated...
The world's oceans contain tremendous renewable energy potentials. It is estimated that if 0.2% of the ocean's untapped energy could be harnessed, it could provide power sufficient for the entire world [1]. This thesis provides a comprehensive description of the state-of-the-art of ocean energy extraction technologies and lessons learned from...
A significantly untapped renewable energy source exists in the world's oceans. It is estimated that if 0.2% of the ocean's untapped energy could be harnessed, it could provide power sufficient for the entire world. Ocean energy extraction is an old concept, and it is currently seeing the benefit of advancing...
Presented is an investigation into the modeling, active control design, and simulation of a generic horizontal pendulum wave energy converter, known as a PWEC. A description is provided of the dominant attributes PWECs have, showcasing their promising potential as wave energy converters. Seeking to further promote this potential, an active...
The substantial wave energy resource of the US Pacific Northwest (i.e. off the coasts of Washington, Oregon and N. California) is assessed and characterized. Archived spectral records from ten wave measurement buoys, operated and maintained by the National Data Buoy Center and the Coastal Data Information Program, form the basis...
Resulting from the action of wind over open water surfaces, water waves contain colossal amounts of energy that has not yet been harnessed. Seen as a very promising source for renewable energy generation, many studies have tried to make wave energy a cost competitive source by investigating optimal designs of...
This report deals with the current status of four promising
sources of electrical energy generation from the oceans. They
are, in sequence;
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion: Where energy is obtained by
exploiting the temperature differences between warm surface
waters, and much deeper colder waters.
Tidal Energy: Where differences in water...
This paper describes a method for measuring nearshore ocean wave characteristics with a land-based, long-period vertical seismometer. The wavemeter system has proven to be highly reliable and produces continuous wave observations at low cost. It is now operational at six Coast Guard stations along the Oregon and Washington coasts; data...
Observations between 20 and 40 m depth were made with a towed thermostor
chain in the North Pacific. Despite the rapid vertical variation
of buoyancy frequency, spectra of isotherm displacements are in fair
agreement with other observations and with the Garrett-Munk model. The
spectra show evidence of a shoulder and...
The eventual deployment of wave energy converters (WECs) on a commercial scale will necessitate the grouping of devices into arrays or "wave farms," in order to minimize overhead costs of mooring, maintenance, installation, and electrical cabling for shoreward power delivery. Closely spaced WECs will interact hydrodynamically through diffracted and radiated...
The response on the continental shelf of a baroclinic ocean to
driving by an alongshore coastal wind stress and by barotropic and
baroclinic wind forced interior motions is studied as a function of
latitude. The relative excitation of continental shelf waves and
internal Kelvin waves is studied.
The response of...
The central Oregon coast was selected as an ideal site for wave energy
development and establishment of the Pacific Marine Energy Center (PMEC). PMEC will consist of two nearshore sites, one north (NETS) and one south (SETS) of the Yaquina River, Oregon. Our study aims to assess how the development...
Renewable energy resources, such as wind, solar, and wave, have a number of advantages compared to traditional fossil fuels. Numerous studies attest to the physical potential for wave energy development in Oregon. In transitioning from conventional fossil fuel to alternative energy provision, citizen understanding of the global energy problems and...
Wind energy is a cornerstone to the world of renewables. It is widely used in many parts of the world as a clean and effective form of power generation. However, wind power has a number of drawbacks, which limits its use in many regions. Solar power has been used not...
Oregon’s coastal communities grew from the booming logging and fishing industries of the 19th century, but in recent decades have faced not only major declines in both timber and fish resources but also an increasing reliance on tourists and retirees and the resultant glut of seasonal service-sector jobs. As a...
On July 9th, the Pacific Marine Energy Center (PMEC) and PacWave hosted national and international experts from government, academia and industry, and across maritime sectors, to explore future research and testing opportunities associated with the development of the PacWave testing facilities. This report summarizes the findings from the strategic break-out...
Underwater monitoring and manipulation with autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are active avenues of research in the Field Robotics Community. The purpose of this document is to briefly summarize some of the more promising research applications as well as provide information from four companies working in the area of marine renewable...
Wave energy is emerging as a new potential source for renewable energy generation. However, wave energy technology is not currently cost competitive with other more mature renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. One approach that researchers and developers are taking to reduce the cost of wave energy is...
Oregon State University conducted a series of laboratory experiments to measure and quantify the near-field wave effects caused within arrays of Wave Energy Converters (WEC). As the waves and WECs interact, the WECs generate radiated waves; these effects vary with the location within the array. Analyzing the near-field waves will...
Ocean Wave Energy Converters (WECs) operating on the water surface are subject to storms and other extreme events. In particular, high and steep waves, especially breaking waves, are likely the most dangerous to WECs. A method for quantifying the breaking severity of waves is presented and applied to wave data...
Wave energy research and development has been ongoing in Oregon for at least two decades. Substantial interest started in the early 2000’s, flattened in the 2010’s, and is on the rise again. The Oregon wave energy sector recently experienced several sizable developments in 2020 and 2021, making this a critical...
Much like wind energy in its early years, marine energy has vast potential, and wave energy converter (WEC) concepts are constantly in development. Consequently, wave energy faces many challenges for expansion and has a wide-ranging design space of WEC concepts. The large design space demands new methods for understanding the...
Wave energy has the potential to power large and small factions of economies around the world alike. Current methods for determining the amount of wave energy resource available to wave energy converter (WEC) devices entail capturing the look of the sea state at large by presenting characteristic wave heights, periods,...
The Pacific Northwest of the United States is characterized by one of the greatest annual mean wave power resources in the world. As a result, the wave energy resource offshore of Oregon has been characterized, through hindcast models and physical buoy data, throughout the past decade. Over the past 8...
North America’s West Coast represents some of the highest global potentials for wave energy output. We developed and conducted a survey of a sample of residents (N=2000) in California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia matched on gender, age, race, and education to the general population. Respondents were asked how much...
Surface waves play a vital role in air-sea interactions, and being able to easily measure them in-situ validates and improves predictive models. Here, we diagnose surface wave properties in the Bay of Bengal using modified vertical SOLO II profiling floats, which are regularly used as part of the Argo ocean...
Realizing the vast amount of energy available in ocean waves, an industry has emerged that is progressing towards the deployment of grid–connected wave energy converters. Likely to be deployed in arrays, a challenge to the wave energy industry is maximizing the energy production of such arrays. We have been developing...
Abstract— A highly idealized model of an ocean-fjord system, in which the tide is forced astronomically by the gravitational force of the moon, is used to study effects of localized tidal energy extraction on regional and global tides. The modeled system is energetically complete in the sense that the model...
The potential for electric energy generation from ocean waves is substantial and much research is being conducted on the conversion process as a renewable, grid-connected, power source. Some of the same attributes that make wave energy harvesting attractive as a grid-connected source also make it attractive as a remote, or...
Ocean waves propagating over cohesionless seabed deposits
produce cyclic shear stresses within the deposit. Under certain
conditions these stresses may cause a progressive build-up of pore
pressure. Pore pressure accumulation can result in liquefaction or
a substantial decrease in the effective stress with attendant large
deformations of the seabed deposit....
Hydraulic power take-off (PTO) systems have been implemented in several wave energy converter (WEC) designs in recent years. Two popular hydraulic PTO configurations coupled to a point absorber hydrodynamic model are simulated in waves representative of an energetic sea state likely to be found in deep waters off the coast...
This thesis presents an examination of the nearshore wave bottom boundary layer
under conditions of significant sediment response. Using both field observations and
simple models, the response of the bottom boundary layer to random waves is shown to
have a complex behavior. First, the linearized wave bottom boundary layer governing...
A linearized model with two vertical modes has been developed to understand observed characteristics of monthly variability in the Equatorial Pacific from TOPEX/POSEIDON measurements of Sea Surface Height (SSH). The 2-mode model is obtained from an equatorial beta plane model that has been linearized about a geostrophically balanced mean flow...
Wave energy conversion is still in its infancy, and in order for it to become a commercially viable technology, developers, investors and utilities need to estimate a Wave Energy Converter's (WEC's) performance for the wave climate of a potential installation site. With the goal of estimating a design's power output...
This thesis presents the details of a large-scale laboratory experiment to study the
turbulence generated by waves breaking on a fixed barred beach. The data set includes
comprehensive measurements of free surface displacement and fluid velocity for one
random and one regular wave case.
Observations of the time-averaged turbulent kinetic...
We investigate, theoretically and experimentally, the problem of modeling depth-integrated (2DH) surf zone circulation on an alongshore-nonuniform natural beach, with waves approaching from an arbitrary angle. An approximate theoretical model is developed, which captures the important effect of advection in the alongshore dynamics, and shows that a nondimensional parameter Re[subscript]s...
Wave-induced circulation is the defining characteristic of the nearshore. Within this region, the constant feedback cycle between incoming waves, wave-generated currents, and the mobile sediment bed is responsible for the evolution of complex patterns in nearshore and beach morphology. Central to our understanding of this system is knowledge of the...
Radiation stresses, defined as the excess flow of momentum due to the presence of waves (Longuet-Higgins, 1964), are the main drivers behind the cross-shore and longshore forcing that results in wave setup, set-down, and longshore currents (e.g. Svendsen, 2006). Longshore currents entrain and transport sediment and therefore play an important...
Ocean testing of Wave Energy Converter (WEC) prototypes is necessary to facilitate commercial WEC development. The Ocean Sentinel Instrumentation Buoy, completed in August 2012, provides a stand-alone load for WEC prototypes during ocean testing. The first part of this work was to develop the power conversion and data acquisition equipment...
This thesis investigates the effects of wave energy converters (WECs) on water waves through the analysis of extensive laboratory experiments, as well as subsequent numerical simulations. Data for the analysis was collected during the WEC-Array Experiments performed at the O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory at Oregon State University, under co-operation...
A sharp temperature front, oriented along the south-west corner of the leading edge of a Tropical Instability Wave (TIW) warm trough, was encountered at 0°N, 140°W on November 2, 2008 and detected by a 0.45°C increase in SST that occurred over 7 s. The distinct SST signal was observed at...
Caissons on permeable seabeds have been designed and constructed
for a variety of needs in coastal and offshore engineering. An evaluation of the adequacy of the foundation beneath the structure is
required for an economic and safe design. To address this requirement, a two-dimensional analytical model of the foundation response...