Abstract
Even though ocean waves around the world are known to contain high and dense amounts of energy, wave energy harvesters are still not as mature as other forms of renewable energy harvesting devices, especially when it comes to commercialization, mass production, and grid integration, but with the recent studies and optimizations, the point absorber wave energy harvester might be a potential candidate to stand out as the best solution to harvest energy from highly energetic locations around the world’s oceans. This paper presents an extensive literature review on point absorber wave energy harvesters and covers their recent theoretical and experimental development. The paper focuses on three main parts: One-body point absorbers, two-body point absorbers, and power take-offs. This review showcases the high amount of work being done to push point absorbers towards technological maturity to eventually kick off commercialization and mass production. It should also provide a good background on the recent status of point absorber development for researchers in the field.
Highlights
During the oil crisis in the 1970s, light was shed on renewable energy as an alternative to fossil fuels
There is a lot of research on the control and power electronics side of linear generators, the readers are referred to [57,58,103] for the electrical side of the development, this paper focuses on the hydrodynamic and mechanical aspects of point absorbers wave energy converter (WEC)
All the offshore floating devices require some sort of mooring, but the mooring requirements of WECs, and point absorbers revolve around keeping them in place under severe ocean conditions as this was emphasized by Harris, et al [111] who assessed different mooring systems used in the gas and oil industry and analysed their applicability in ocean waves energy harvesting
Summary
During the oil crisis in the 1970s, light was shed on renewable energy as an alternative to fossil fuels. Ocean waves energy conversion technology, while it has higher energy density and efficiency, still hasn’t established itself in the renewable energy market, but is currently being researched, analysed and optimized to be implemented within power grids around the world. Like all other forms of renewable energy resources, ocean wave energy research peaked during the 1970s after it was first established in the late 18th century [1,2], and the oil business boomed again, lowering the focus on all forms of renewable energy resources, including ocean wave energy harvesting. Due to many factors including the focus on CO2 emissions and environmental impacts of power resources, the low efficiency of renewable energy harvesting system related to solar power, hydropower, and wind energy, and the realisation of massive power density within ocean. Most of the work done in ocean wave energy harvesting is theoretical only, and that is due to many factors and challenges
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