Abstract
With the diversification of marine monitoring buoy functions, limited onboard batteries have been unable to meet the energy demand of multifarious carrying sensors. Finding a self-sustained power supply for marine monitoring buoys is an urgent problem, while wave energy is an ideal and promising option to address that problem. In this study, two wave-excited vibration energy harvesters (WVEHs) are proposed, which can be installed inside large buoys to provide a sustainable power supply. A full-coupled wave-to-wire model is developed to investigate the influence of blocks’ mass, geometric size of buoys, mooring system and WVEH’s quantity on the electric power performance of harvesters in realistic sea states. Parametric studies based on the Taguchi method imply that the sea state and the WVEH’s quantity have a significant effect on the device’s electric power performance. Numerical results indicate that the optimized two harvesters can produce a mean electric power of 777.50W and 747.43W, respectively, under a sea state with a peak wave period of 7s and a significant wave height of 1.6m. A high wave-to-wire efficiency of 2.60% is obtained for a specific system parameter combination. Furthermore, more electric power generation can be achieved by installing multiple harvesting units.