Offshore Wind, Wave and Integrated Energy Conversion Systems: A Review and Future

The offshore wind and wave are two promising renewable resources to address the concerns about the repaid growing energy demand across the world and the reduction of dependency on fossil fuels. Although these two resources have experienced significant development in the past decades, few research studies have been identified discussing the electrical systems as a part of various power transfer topologies. There is a lack of study which effectively considers potential configurations of highly intermittent wind and wave energy source and their impacts on the entire system operation, system efficiency, reliability and grid connection. This paper aims to fulfil this gap and to provide a comprehensive review on the electrical systems that can be utilised in both wind and wave energy conversion systems. The types of generators and control systems with power electronics used in the offshore wind turbines are presented and compared. The operation principles within the wave energy converters are discussed and classified. The selection of generators in the wave power take-off systems are discussed. A comprehensive guideline for the development of future integrated systems is provided in this paper primarily to reduce the cost of offshore systems, increase energy yield and improve reliability, predictability and dispatchability.