Power Take-Off and Energy Storage System Static Modeling and Sizing for Direct Drive Wave Energy Converter to Support Ocean Sensing Applications

Abstract

This paper addresses the sizing and design problem of a permanent magnet electrical machine power take-off system for a two-body wave energy converter, which is designed to support ocean sensing applications with sustained power. The design is based upon ground truth ocean data bi-spectrums (swell and wind waves) from Martha’s Vineyard Coastal Observatory in the year 2015. According to the ground truth ocean data, the paper presents the optimal harvesting power time series of the whole year. The electrical machine and energy storage static modeling are introduced in the paper. The paper uses the ground truth ocean data in March to discuss the model integration of the buoy dynamic model, the power take-off model, and the energy storage model. Electrical machine operation constraints are applied to ensure the designed machine can fulfill the buoy control requirements. The electrical machine and energy storage systems operation status is presented as well. Furthermore, rule-based control strategies are applied to the electrical machine for fulfilling specific design demands, such as improving power generating efficiency and downsizing the electrical machine scale. The corresponding required capacities of the energy storage system are discussed. This paper relates results to the wave data sets (different combinations of significant wave heights and periods of both swell and wind waves). In this way, the power take-off system rule-based control strategy determinations can rely on current ocean wave measurements instead of a large historical ocean wave database.