A high-fidelity wave-to-wire model for wave energy converters

Markel Penalba and John V. Ringwood

Renewable Energy, 2019, vol. 134, issue C, 367-378

Abstract: Mathematical models incorporating all the necessary components of wave energy converters (WECs) from ocean waves to the electricity grid, known as wave-to-wire (W2W) models, are vital in the development of wave energy technologies. Ideally, precise W2W models should include all the relevant nonlinear dynamics, constraints and energy losses. This paper presents a balanced W2W model that incorporates high-fidelity models for each conversion system, and can accommodate different types of WECs, hydraulic power take-off (PTO) topologies, electric generators and grid connections. The models of the different conversion stages presented herein are efficiently implemented in the W2W model using a multi-rate integration scheme that reduces the computational requirements by a factor of 10. Two W2W models, i.e. one with the constant-pressure hydraulic PTO configuration and one with the variable-pressure configuration, are compared in this paper. Results show that a higher PTO efficiency (30% higher for the constant-pressure configuration) does not necessarily imply a higher electricity generation (2% higher for the variable-pressure configuration), which reinforces the need for high-fidelity W2W models for the design of successful WECs.

Keywords: Wave energy; Wave-to-wire modelling; High-fidelity; Hydraulic power take-off; Multi-rate solver (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148118313600
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:134:y:2019:i:c:p:367-378

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2018.11.040

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().