Experimental Study on Performance Analysis of Oscillating Water Column Wave Energy Converter Integrated into Breakwater

Abstract

Korea Research Institute of Ships and Ocean Engineering (KRISO) is developing an oscillating water column (OWC) wave energy converter through a government funded project to integrate the OWC into breakwaters for the purpose of supplying clean energy to the island area. In the previous study, a sloped OWC chamber that can be easily constructed on an existing conventional breakwater has been developed, and its performance for primary energy conversion has been evaluated by using various analysis methods. In this study, the performance of primary energy conversion for the sloped OWC chamber integrated into the breakwater was evaluated by the experimental method. The experiment was carried out in the shallow water wave basin with modelling the PTO (Power Take-OFF) as an orifice and the breakwater as scaled tetrapods and base structures with a scale ratio of 1/20. The regular wave test for various incident wave period as well as various wave slopes was performed to measure the water surface level inside the chamber, the differential pressure between the inside of the chamber and the atmosphere, and the airflow speed through the orifice. By comparing results for various wave condition and with or without the presence of the breakwater, effect of the wave slope dependency and the presence of the breakwater on the OWC performance was discussed.