Wells turbine is one of the technical systems allowing an efficient use of the power contained in oceans’ and seas’ waves with a relatively low investment level. It converts the pneumatic power of the air stream induced by an Oscillating Water Column into mechanical energy. The standard...

A novel adaptive current controller for DFIG-based wind turbines is introduced in this paper. The attractiveness of the proposed strategy results from its ability to actively estimate and actively compensate for the plant dynamics and external disturbances in real time. Thus, the control...

This paper reports on the development of a two-dimensional, fully nonlinear CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) model with dynamic mesh to analyze the performance of a heave-only floating OWC (oscillating water column) device. The model was validated against previous experimental, analytical and...

Providing energy without unfavorable impacts on the environment is an important issue for many countries. Wave energy is one of the renewable resources with high potential and low impact on the environment, especially in coastal regions. The estimation of the wave characteristics is essential...

In an OWC (oscillating water column) wave energy converter the damping exerted by the turbine on the movements of the water column is one of the main factors, if not the main, affecting the power output. In this work the effects of the turbine-induced damping and the variation in the tidal level...

Offshore applications allow to exploit different renewable energy sources (wave, wind, solar) that are complementary each other, due to their statistical yearly distributions.

World energy demand is increasing at an alarming rate and producing electricity from alternative or renewable energy sources is becoming necessary. There are many technologies to extract electric energy from sea waves such as: the oscillating water column, the point absorber, the overtopping...

The oscillating water column (OWC) equipped with an air turbine is one of the most actively studied devices for wave energy conversion. It consists of a partially submerged hollow structure whose upper part forms an air chamber and whose immersed part is open to the action of the sea waves. The...

The objective of the present work is to evaluate the patterns of wave power resources around the Madeira Islands. An analysis of the wave climate in the target area is first carried out based on satellite, buoy and hindcast wave data. As a further step, a SWAN based wave prediction system is...

Where should the first wave farm in a region be installed? The nearshore area with the largest resource is the prime candidate. But how should this area be determined? Wave resource analyses typically consider a small number of wave patterns. Does the number of wave patterns influence the...