Ocean wave energy converters: Technical principle, device realization, and performance evaluation

As a renewable energy with immense development potential, ocean wave energy has abundant storage. The utilizations of wave energy technology to exploit wave energy resources have broad application prospects and an important realistic meaning. The researchers worldwide have designed many wave energy converters (WEC) with varied and structures based on different concepts. In this paper, the principle of wave energy power generation technology is reviewed and analyzed from basic structure and power take-off (PTO). Some typical WEC and multi-degree of freedom WEC (MDWEC) and their realization are introduced. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is employed to construct a comprehensive multi-index model and evaluate the present WEC from five perspectives: energy capture, technology cost economic, reliability, environmental friendliness and adaptability. Results show that in the field of wave energy utilization and development, the MDWEC has a good comprehensive performance and a wide application range. Qualitative and quantitative methods are adopted to find the optimal WEC technical scheme based on the review and analysis of technology principles of wave energy power generation and realization of devices, which can be used for the development of WEC.