Ocean tidal currents, water waves and thermal gradients are a great source of renewable energy. Ocean tidal, osmotic, wave and thermal sources have annual potentials of 800, 2,000, 8000–80,000 and 10,000–87,600 TWh, which are more than global 16,000 TWh/y electricity demand. Ocean wave generators produce relatively lower output, however, four to eleven meters tidal range stations have large power generation capacities. Abundant ocean heat energy potentially harvested using ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) devices and ocean thermo-electric generators (OTEG). Tidal stations may be tidal range or current types, but a wave energy converter (WEC) may be an oscillating water column (OWC), overtopping, heaving, pitching and surging devices. Ocean thermal energy can be harnessed by open, close Rankine cycles, thermo-electric generators and osmotic power plants. Large bays like Turnagain (USA), Annapolis/Minas Passage (Canada), Seven Barrages/Pentland Firth (UK), La Rance (France), Garorim (South Korea) and Mezen/Penzhin (Russia) have huge tidal current power generation capacities. Power Potential from tidal current stations is more than WEC devices which in turn is more than osmotic, OTEC and OTEG technologies. This paper reviews the current state-of-the-art of tidal, wave, OTEC and OTEG ocean energy technologies.

Review of ocean tidal, wave and thermal energy technologies

For the research and development (R&D) of wave energy converters (WECs), numerical wave tanks (NWTs) provide an excellent numerical tool, enabling a cost-effective testbed for WEC experimentation, analysis and optimisation. Different methods for simulating the fluid dynamics and fluid structure interaction (FSI) within the NWT have been developed over the years, with increasing levels of fidelity, and associated computational expense. In the past, the high computational requirements largely precluded Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) from being applied to WEC analysis. However, the continual improvement and availability of high performance computing has led to the steady increase of CFD-based NWTs (CNWT) for WEC experiments. No attempt has yet been undertaken to comprehensively review CNWT approaches for WECs. This paper fills this gap and presents a thorough review of high-fidelity numerical modelling of WECs using CNWTs. In addition to collating the published literature, this review tries to make a step towards a best practice guideline for the applications of CFD in the field of wave energy.

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High-fidelity numerical modelling of ocean wave energy systems: A review of computational fluid dynamics-based numerical wave tanks

https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/54302/1/Day_etal_OE_2015_Hydrodynamic_modelling_of_marine_renewable_energy_devices.pdf

Hydrodynamic modelling of marine renewable energy devices : a state of the art review

It has been well accepted that wave energy may have the potential to significantly contribute to the future renewable energy mix but so far it remains as the largest untapped renewable resources since the current wave energy technologies are technically immature for reliable and economic energy production. The greatest challenges would be how the performance of wave energy converters can be reliably assessed and how the wave energy conversion efficiency can be improved. These two challenges are strongly linked, with the former producing the required tools for the latter, which is a critical part for reducing the overall cost of wave energy production. For understanding the issues involved in wave energy conversion, the relevant energy conversion technologies are discussed, with a focus on hydrodynamics modelling for the wave energy converters. To achieve the goal, the review presents the fundamental understandings to wave energy conversions and the descriptions and discussions are made for what are the challenges in wave energy development, how the reliable numerical and physical modelling techniques for wave energy converters can be carried out, and how to optimise the power take-off and wave energy devices for improving wave energy conversion. Particularly, the issues with the hydrodynamics modelling are discussed in details, including the important issues with the control technologies and the end-stop problems.

Wave energy conversion and hydrodynamics modelling technologies: A review

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8518774/file/8521451.pdf

Application of a buoyancy-modified k-ω SST turbulence model to simulate wave run-up around a monopile subjected to regular waves using OpenFOAM®

Scaling and air compressibility effects on a three-dimensional offshore stationary OWC wave energy converter

Experimental and numerical investigations on the hydrodynamic performance of a floating-moored oscillating water column wave energy converter

Numerical energy balance analysis for an onshore oscillating water column–wave energy converter

http://ecite.utas.edu.au/111725/2/111725%20Published.pdf

Alan Fleming

Papers

Scaling and air compressibility effects on a three-dimensional offshore stationary OWC wave energy converter

Experimental and numerical investigations on the hydrodynamic performance of a floating-moored oscillating water column wave energy converter

Numerical energy balance analysis for an onshore oscillating water column–wave energy converter

Numerical hydrodynamic analysis of an offshore stationary–floating oscillating water column–wave energy converter using CFD

Underwater geometrical impact on the hydrodynamic performance of an offshore oscillating water column-wave energy converter