Abstract
Offshore Wave Energy Limited’s “OWEL” wave energy converter is a novel design that uses the forward surging motion of deep water waves to capture and compress air. Uni-directional compressed air flow is used by the device to drive a turbine and generator to produce electricity. Previous experimental studies provided useful initial information about the general operating principles and basic trends in device performance. This paper serves as a progress update of the small scale, 2D experimental work being carried out at the University of Southampton. Testing has investigated the relationships between device performance and wave characteristics as well as trialling a series of different geometric configurations of the model.