Overtopping Converter Prototype for Electrical Generation from Wave Energy : Laboratory Test

Sammanfattning: It is not a coincidence that over half the world‟s population live in coastal areas using the sea as a mean to develop its industry, thus the sea is present in most aspects of daily life. Because of the vital relationship with the marine environment, for many years mankind is aware of the high energy potential contained in waves. During the last hundred years, thousands patents of devices for the extraction of the energy from waves have been published. However, the researching still faces the challenge of develop the optimal wave energy converter that matches robustness, to withstand extreme marine conditions, and sensitivity, to respond the different sea states. In this thesis a scale model of a wave overtopping converter has been designed, built and tested. In this type of wave electricity converter the waves ascend a ramp, filling a reservoir located at a certain height above sea level. The stored water in the reservoir is discharged back into the sea, powering a turbine, thus generating electricity. The system is composed of a wave energy converter, at a scale of 1:100 without turbine, a test channel and a plunger type wave maker. Different sea conditions have been simulated, to assess how the different configurations of the device influence the obtained hydraulic power and flow. It has been concluded that there is an appropriate configuration of the wave electricity converter for each wave period and height. The simulated sea conditions were composed of wave periods of around a second and wave heights of about two centimeters. Finally by applying scale transformations, an estimation of the hydraulic power that the wave electricity converter would extract with this configuration in the deep waters of Tenerife South has been calculated. Summarizing, in this thesis the methodology of testing and the comparison with real conditions has been developed.