Abstract
There is a worldwide opportunity for local and distributed clean renewable electrical power from Marine Energy.
It has the potential to become competitive with other forms of energy and by 2020, 3% of the UK's energy could be derived from wave and tidal energy, providing up to 1/6 of the UK government’s aspiration of 20% renewable energy by this time.
The key to success in clean electrical power lies in a low lifetime-cost of power as delivered to the user. For wave- power this must start with a compact, powerful and reliable wave energy converter, or WEC.
Pitching-surge point-absorber WECs have the potential to generate average annual powers of around 1.5MW in North Atlantic conditions from relatively small devices.
The paper reports very early work on one such device – WRASPA (Wave-driven, Resonant, Arcuate action, Surging Point-Absorber) - in water depths greater than 20m including the effects of collector geometry on power output, based on both experimental and computational modelling. In particular, the progress towards an optimum collector geometry will be described. Engineering designs for devices based on these findings will be outlined.