Technology, Geometry, Performance and Challenges in Wave Energy Converters

Abstract

Recently, the worldwide energy scarcity raised the demand for integrated renewable energy in the modern grid. Considering the potential and ocean areas, wave energy-based power generation becomes an essential sustainable source for industry and academia. Notably, the wave energy converter (WEC) is the most common solution for extracting power from wave energy and convert into electricity. Wave electricity generation is the main method of using wave energy, and wave energy converters that are the core of wave energy technology have been widely and rapidly evolved. In this paper, the state-of-art WECs are reviewed with the classification based on different ways and different principle of operation of capturing energy of waves, including oscillating water column WEC (OWC-WEC), oscillating buoy WEC (OB-WEC) and overtopping WECs (O-WEC) are systematically reviewed in terms of operation principles, geometric structure and power take-off (PTO) strategies. Additionally, the energy conversion efficiency between different technologies is compared and summarized. The challenges and optimization aspects are delivered.