Abstract
Due to the energy crisis and greenhouse effect, offshore renewable energy is attracting increasing attention worldwide. Various offshore renewable energy systems, such as floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs), and wave energy converters (WECs), have been proposed and developed so far. To increase power output and reduce related costs, a combined marine energy structure using FOWT and WEC technologies has been designed, analyzed and presented in the present paper. The energy structure combines a 5-MW braceless semisubmersible FOWT and a heave-type WEC which is installed on the central column of the semisubmersible. Wave power is absorbed by a power take-off (PTO) system through the relative heave motion between the central column of the FOWT and the WEC. A numerical model has been developed and is used to determine rational size and draft of the combined structure. The effects of different PTO system parameters on the hydrodynamic performance and wave energy production of the WEC under typical wave conditions are investigated and a preliminary best value for the PTO’s damping coefficient is obtained. Additionally, the effects of viscous modeling used during the analysis and the hydrodynamic coupling on the response of the combined structure are studied.
Highlights
Due to the exhaustion of fossil fuels and their pollution on the environment, people are trying to develop various clean and renewable energy technologies to replace conventional energy resources
Two combined systems have been proposed, which respectively consist of the same WindFloat semisubmersible turbine platform with a point-absorber-type wave energy converter (WEC) and an oscillating-water-column type wave energy converters (WECs)
We introduce a combined marine energy structure consisting of a 5-MW braceless wind turbine developed in [15] with a heave-type WEC inspired by the STC system [16,17], which was proposed first by our team
Summary
Due to the exhaustion of fossil fuels and their pollution on the environment, people are trying to develop various clean and renewable energy technologies to replace conventional energy resources. Wan et al [8,9,10] studied the dynamic response characteristics of the STC under typical operational and extreme sea states based on numerical and experimental methods. Another combined structure combining a floating semisubmersible wind turbine and flap-type WECs (named as SFC) was proposed. We introduce a combined marine energy structure consisting of a 5-MW braceless wind turbine developed in [15] with a heave-type WEC inspired by the STC system [16,17], which was proposed first by our team. A survival mode is examined in order to ensure combined concepts survivability in extreme wave conditions
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