The inherently advantageous geographical location of East and Southeast Asia provides a great potential for the development of diverse ocean energy technologies along its densely populated coastlines. This review paper focuses on the flexibility and feasibility of emerging ocean energy technologies in this region, including wave, tidal and ocean-current energy converters, floating photovoltaics, and offshore wind-turbines. Recent research on wave energy in the region has achieved advancements such as modifying oscillating water columns to exchange higher pneumatic energy, reshaping oscillating devices to capture more kinetic energy, and improving overtopping converters to absorb more incident waves. Regarding tidal energy, the paper reviews barrage-based and stream-based turbines and investigates the efficiency improvement, flexibility enhancement and adaptation to the unique regional features. Regarding ocean current energy, research on low-velocity turbines and optimized energy storage systems has made their application in the region more competitive. In addition, offshore deployments of floating photovoltaics have recently drawn the sector's attention and are beginning to emerge in the region, although their robustness against extreme weather and wave conditions should be addressed. Furthermore, compared to other ocean technologies, offshore wind technologies have attracted the most investment in the region. Due to the fluctuation of wind-energy generation, enhancing the energy flexibility to increase its grid penetration has become a recent focus in both the academic and industrial communities. However, despite the good research and demonstrations, most of the abovementioned ocean technologies still encounter considerable techno-economic and techno-environmental challenges that limit their competitiveness in the East and Southeast Asian markets. 

State-of-the-art review of the flexibility and feasibility of emerging offshore and coastal ocean energy technologies in East and Southeast Asia

Integrating multi-type Wave Energy Converters (WECs) enables wave energy to be extracted from multiple harvesting manners simultaneously, which presents a more competitive energy conversion technology. In this study, an Oscillating Water Column (OWC) and an Oscillating Buoy (OB) are combined to devise a hybrid WEC system that serves as a floating breakwater. The two devices are aligned in line with the incident wave direction, where the OB is deployed upstream from the OWC. A series of physical experiments are conducted to understand the working principle of the hybrid WEC system. After a fully non-linear time-domain model is validated by the measured data, the comparisons of the hybrid system and its respective isolated devicesare emphasised. Then, the hydrodynamic dependence of the hybrid system is comprehensively tested. The results indicated that the hybrid system design provides higher energy conversion as well as better wave attenuation performance compared to the isolated OWC and OB devices. Additionally, the OB outperforms the OWC in terms of wave energy conversion. The OWC-OB gap resonance has a negative impact on wave energy extraction but has a negligible effect on wave attenuation. The OWC with a deeper draft and symmetric wall performs better both in terms of wave energy extraction and wave attenuation in long-period waves. The overall conversion efficiency decreases with the increase of the OB draft, but the transmission coefficient follows an opposite trend. The PTO dampings of the OB and the OWC dominate the overall conversion efficiency and the transmission coefficient, respectively. • Hydrodynamics of a OWC-OB WEC-breakwater system is investigated experimentally. • A fully nonlinear numerical model is developed to cross-check the measured data. • Higher energy conversion and wave attenuation are realized by the hybrid system. • Wave resonance in the gap leads to the sudden reduction of energy conversion. • Two PTO systems play different roles in the hydrodynamic performance. 

Experimental and numerical analysis of a hybrid WEC-breakwater system combining an oscillating water column and an oscillating buoy

Turbulence model effects on the hydrodynamic response of an oscillating water column (OWC) with use of a computational fluid dynamics model

A review on the progress and research directions of ocean engineering

Influences of wave resonance on hydrodynamic efficiency and loading of an OWC array under oblique waves

The multi-chamber Oscillating Water Column (OWC) device has recently become more attractive due to its potential high efficiency. In this paper, the hydrodynamic performance of a single-, dual- and triple-chamber OWC-breakwater are investigated experimentally. In the first instance, quantitative comparisons are implemented to understand the hydrodynamic performance of multi-chamber OWC-breakwaters. Specific attention has been dedicated to the hydrodynamic performance of capture width ratio (CWR), reflection coefficient, transmission coefficient, dissipation coefficient and effective frequency bandwidth. The investigation identified various findings that can be summarized as follows: i) hydrodynamic interactions between chambers in the multi-chamber OWC device has improved wave power extraction characteristics; ii) comparing with the conventional pontoon breakwater, the multi-chamber OWC-breakwater showed better wave attenuation performance in longer waves; iii) wave steepness is important for evaluating the performance of the multiple-chamber OWC-breakwater device; and iv) the implementation of the multi-chamber scheme broadens the effective frequency bandwidth (satisfied the condition of KT   0.2) of OWC-breakwater.

Lidong Zhang

Papers

Experimental investigation on the hydrodynamic performance of a multi-chamber OWC-breakwater