Continual growth of the world's energy consumption and the demand for long-term clean renewable energy resources has led to the development of ocean-based wave energy technologies. Emerging technologies are advancing potential solutions to the complex problem of energy generation in the harsh and corrosive ocean environment. To develop these technologies,...
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...
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;...
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...
In 2008, the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Wind and Water Power Program issued a funding opportunity announcement to establish university-‐led National Marine Renewable Energy Centers. Oregon State University and the University of Washington combined their capabilities in wave and tidal energy to establish the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy...
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...
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...
There is a perceived trade-off between fire risk reduction and northern spotted owl habitat protection in dry-conifer forests in southwestern Oregon. Management options for balancing this trade-off need to be sought at the landscape level. Applied landscape ecology suggests three important features to consider are (1) patch size and configuration...
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...
A key component in bringing ocean wave energy converters from concept to commercialization is the building and testing of scaled prototypes to provide model validation. A one quarter scale prototype of an autonomous two body heaving point absorber was modeled, built, and tested for this work. Wave tank testing results...