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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Development of wave and offshore wind-based marine renewable energy is anticipated on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) off Oregon and much of the Pacific Northwest in the coming decade. Multiple issues related to environmental considerations and information needs remain for these emerging industries. The Oregon Marine Renewable Energy Environmental Science...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
The performance of the power take-off (PTO) system for a wave energy converter (WEC) depends largely on its control algorithm. This paper presents an adaptive damping control algorithm that improves power capture across a range of sea states. Validation for the numerical model was performed using data from two sources;...
The reliability and survivability of a wave energy converter (WEC) is highly dependent on the variability and non-linearity of the ocean itself. Ocean variability occurs on many time scales. Climate variability occurs decade-to-decade, and year-to-year in the number and intensity of winter storms. Seasonal variation of wave height and period...
Ocean wave energy converter technology continues to advance and new developers continue to emerge, leading to the need for a general design, modeling, and testing methodology. This work presents a development of the process of taking a wave energy converter from a concept to the prototype stage. A two body...
Ocean wave energy has great potential to develop into a strong and reliable form of renewable energy. As the technology develops, more wave energy converters will be grid interconnected and the variable nature of the ocean will begin to influence the stability of the electrical grid system. There are many...
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Annette R. von Jouanne
Oceanwave energy has great potential to develop into a strong
With the increasing effort to identify alternative methods of energy generation, extraction of ocean energy has gathered a large interest. Research and industry have begun considering wave energy as the next new alternative energy. The unique challenges of ocean energy requires a wave energy converter to be both robust and...
Knowledge of wave conditions in nearshore regions supports the development of
ocean wave energy technology by providing wave climatology for device design
considerations, and power output estimates. By modeling wave transformation
over the continental shelf, wave conditions were predicted in nearshore regions
where potential wave energy conversion sites are located....
Ocean wave energy is a new and developing field of renewable energy with great potential. The energy contained in one meter of an average wave off the coast of Newport Oregon could supply dozens of homes with electricity. However, ocean waves are usually quite irregular which leads to large bursts...
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...
Recently, there has been peaked interest in developing high energy producing and optimized power take-off topologies for Wave Energy Converters (WEC). As large as the potential of the oceans may seem, harnessing that energy and effectively converting it to electricity in significant amounts is a challenge. Currently, there are no...
This study presents a methodology for power take off (PTO) forecasting for an array of heave wave energy converters (WECs). Based on spectral data obtained directly from the National Data Buoy Center, representative realistic sea states are generated at the location of the WECs, and by using two wave-structure interaction...
Ocean wave energy shows great potential as a developing form of renewable energy. However, challenges arise in maturing this technology to achieve cost-effective energy conversion. Development and testing of wave energy converters can be problematic due to the harsh environment in which they are operated. To promote development of this...
Commonly proposed ocean wave energy converters (OWEC) use inefficient and maintenance demanding intermediate hydraulic and pneumatic systems. We propose a novel rotary direct-drive OWEC that eliminates these intermediate stages. The new device employs a contactless force transmission system (CFTS) comprising a “piston” and a “cylinder” and a ball screw to...
The world’s energy consumption is growing at an alarming rate and the need for renewable energy is apparent now more than ever. Estimates have shown that optimization of the extraction of energy from the ocean could significantly aid the world’s quest for sustainable and affordable energy services for all. From...
The ocean off Oregon's coast is a busy place with many activities occurring that can sometimes be in competition or cooperation. Deciding how new uses fit with existing ocean uses is complex, but there are some tools available to help decision-makers. Generating energy from waves is an emerging ocean use...
Power generation has been an ever growing exigency since the invention of electric power. The world is gradually inching away from conventional generation toward renewable generation. Advancements in renewable energy generation have been at a steady positive pace over the past few decades with different resources developing to be feasible...
As the negative impacts of a fossil fueled electricity market are becoming more prevalent and destructive, the necessity for alternative energy techniques increases as well. However, before commercial implementation is underway, these alternatives must be assessed from three important perspectives: environmentally, economically, and socially, which are known as the three...
With the ever-increasing demand and competition for global energy resources among nations, it is essential to explore and tap into various energy sources to reduce dependency on global markets. Renewable energy sources offer a significant opportunity to create localized and stable energy supplies. Ocean wave energy can be a promising...
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...
With energy prices rising and increasing concern about the influence of fossil fuels on climate change, wave energy systems are on the verge of commercial implementation. These first generation wave energy converters utilize either pneumatics or hydraulics to convert the mechanical energy of waves into electricity. For the last several...
Numerical model and assimilation experiments were conducted in the tropical Pacific Ocean to obtain a better understanding of the processes that control the cold tongue surface mixed layer temperature balance during August 1999 to July 2004. The numerical model was first applied to test two hypotheses (asymmetric background currents and...
Wave energy converter (WEC) devices are complicated systems containing hydrodynamic, mechanical, and electrical elements. WEC design efforts are primarily focused in the time-domain, using frequency-based energy analyses and numerical problem solving approaches that are staples in hydrodynamic design efforts to form the basic information set used in these time-domain development...
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 report documents oceanographic and meteorological measurements made from instruments deployed on four moorings over the continental shelf west of Oregon, from spring through
summer, 1999. These moorings were a component of an observational and numerical modeling program to study the response of the coastal ocean to wind forcing.
The...
With the need to integrate renewable energy sources into the current energy portfolio and the proximity of many population centers to an ocean coastline, it is pressing that marine energy systems, specifically wave energy converters (WECs), are evaluated as potential solutions for meeting energy needs. In order to best understand...
Wave Energy Converters (WECs) promise to be a viable alternative to current electrical generation methods. However, these WECs must become more efficient before wide-scale industrial use can become cost-effective. The efficiency of a WEC is primarily dependent upon its geometry and ballast configuration which are both difficult to evaluate, due...
Renewable energy is a topic of significant interest and importance in the world today. Ocean wave energy, particularly in areas such as the Oregon Coast, has considerable potential as a renewable resource. However, to rightly evaluate the overall cost of energy for wave energy converters, survivability and maintenance issues must...
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...