Electrical system for wavefarm

Abstract

Electrical power production through renewable energy sources has gained importance over last few decades due to depleting natural resources and increasing concerns about green energy. Replacing the use of fossil fuels, coal, oil, and natural gas; renewable energy sources can deliver the growing demand of electricity. Wave energy is one of the emerging and promising renewa-ble energy source that can potentially contribute in delivering electrical power. In this project electrical design of a wavefarm comprising of various wave energy converters was proposed. In this regard the design of wave energy converter (Wave El Buoy) was studied. Eco-nomically and practically feasible design is selected for a single buoy unit. Performance of Wave El Buoy was evaluated by considering Synchronous reluctance generator and full power fre-quency converter. Standard components were employed to achieve cost effectiveness ensuring the system reliability. Additionally, the integration of this system into the floating transformer hub considering various radial schemes was investigated based on performance and economics. This included power loss evaluation of the transmission network and the voltage drop over each radial scheme. Optimal design with lowest power loss and voltage drop was selected and pro-posed. Lastly in this project, in order to understand the potential of wave energy, a comparison was made between a wavefarm and a windfarm in terms of power density.