Design and experiments of linear tubular generators for the inertial sea wave energy converter

Sea waves are one of the most interesting and well distributed renewable energy sources in the world. At the current state of the art, several devices have been proposed for wave power exploitation and some have been commercialized. The Inertial Sea Wave Energy Converter is a wave energy converter composed of a floating body slack-moored to the seabed using a gyroscope as a reference frame to produce electric power. In this work the gyroscopic wave energy converter is equipped with two linear tubular generators exploiting the reciprocating movement between the gyroscopic system and the hull to generate power. The linear generators are designed for a 3 kW device. Experimental tests on a small scale prototype are performed. © 2011 IEEE