Experimental Evaluation of a Point Absorber Wave Energy Converter in a Laboratory Wave Tank

Ocean wave is one of the renewable energy sources that can supply part of the world's energy needs and thus reduce the rate of consumption of fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources. Wave energy converters (WEC) are systems that extract electrical energy from sea waves. For achieving this technology, experimental modelling is of great importance. For hydrodynamically modelling this system and analysing its performance in different conditions, a wave tank is needed to apply sea circumstances to the system. In this study, we investigated experimentally a WEC which was made in Hydrodynamics, Acoustics and Marine propulsion Laboratory at Babol Noshirvani University of Technology. We evaluated the WEC for a wide range of waves in the wave tank. We presented wave characteristics by which the system had appropriate pitch motion and acceptable extracted electrical energy. Moreover, according to data obtained for WEC performance and annual energy diagram of the Caspian Sea, scales 1:5 and 1:6 are selected for making the WEC prototype. Selecting the scales of 1:5 and 1:6, extracted power from the prototypes are about 28 and 53 kilowatts, respectively.