On the Correlation between Electrical Power and Wave Characteristics for Wave Energy Converters

The current technological advancement has inevitably been followed by the increase in energy demand. On the one hand, fossil fuel reserve is being depleted all over the world. On the other hand, these energy sources cause environmental concern. All these factors necessitate taking more actions on utilizing renewable energy resources. Typically, power generation from wind and solar photovoltaic has paid much attention. However, ocean wave energy that has a substantial potential to become an effective energy source is yet less investigated. Ocean wave energy predominantly depends on geographical characteristics such as wave height and wave period. In this paper, comprehensive investigations are carried out to explore the dependence of electrical power output of wave energy converters on the aforementioned parameters. To this end, Floating Buoy Point Absorber and Oscillating Surge Wave Energy Converters are taken into consideration. First, a technique is presented to extract the electrical energy from the wave energy using the above two devices. Afterwards, correlation between electrical power and wave characteristics is thoroughly analyzed under various scenarios.