Oscillating Water Column Coursework

Name: Zhong Sheng Tan

Table of Contents
1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 3
2. Methodology ....................................................................................................................................... 3
2.1 Formula ......................................................................................................................................... 3
2.2 Experiment Data and Analysis ...................................................................................................... 4
3. Results ................................................................................................................................................. 5
4. Discussions .......................................................................................................................................... 6
4.1 Part 1 ............................................................................................................................................. 6
4.1.1 The different orifice plate sizes at full scale & their impact on predicted Annual Energy .... 6
4.1.2 Limitations of the experiments .............................................................................................. 7
4.3 The effect of changing the length of Water Column ................................................................ 7
4.2 Part 2 – Hybrid Devices ................................................................................................................. 8
4.2.1 Advantages and Disadvantages of a hybrid wind / wave system (compared to wind only
devices) ........................................................................................................................................... 8
4.2.2 Additional engineering challenges using a hybrid device ...................................................... 8
4.2.3 Influence the design of a floating ORE array ......................................................................... 9
4.2.4 Short description on the recent advancements in the hybrid devices .................................. 9
4.2.5 Costs to change between a wind only array and a hybrid array.......................................... 10
5. Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 10
6. References ........................................................................................................................................ 11
7. Appendices ........................................................................................................................................ 12
7.1 Appendix I ................................................................................................................................... 12
1. Introduction
Oscillating Water Column (OWC) which is one of the popular renewable energy devices extracts
power from ocean wave and convert into electrical power. The OWC consists of a partially
submerged, hollow structure that allows the water pass through. The air in the collector is
pressurized by alternating wave crest and wave trough and ultimately cause the alternating air flow
in and out to the orifice in the water column. Generally, a biaxial turbine will be placed at the middle
top of the collector to convert the kinetic motion from air into rotational motion. It has some of the
advantages over other over wave energy converter, including few moving parts, reliable, easy to
maintain and sea space efficiently (Heath, 2012). However, power harvesting capability that will be
affected by the sizes of orifice plate and the wave states have not been studied thoroughly.
Therefore, it is important to investigate the effect of various orifice sizes on the power capture. In
this experiment, the effect of various orifice sizes was investigated to maximize the annual energy
capture based on the real wave states near Plymouth provided from Channel Coastal Observatory in
terms of wave height, period, and occurrence.

A hybrid device for renewable energy has become a new development trend in recent years,
particularly for wave energy devices into offshore wind devices. The hybrid system integrates two or
more different energy sources to create a more efficient and reliable power production system. It is
worthwhile to note that advanced technology and research are necessarily required due to their
complexities with respect to design process, manufacturing and multiple factors that influence the
power extraction. Nevertheless, recent advancements in the hybrid devices can be noticed from the
online resources and advertisement. Cost is a crucial parameter in the implementation of hybrid
renewable energy device. Some of the costs, from manufacturing to installation processes, can be
reduced efficiently for a hybrid device because of their shared planform such as foundation and
moorings.

2. Methodology
2.1 Formula
Average Power

Assumption: air compressibility is neglectable, using Bernoulli’s principle.

𝑡2
1 𝑑𝑧
Pout = ∫ pA1 dt (W)
𝑡2 − 𝑡1 𝑡1 𝑑𝑡

Where t1 = starting time of the analysis, t2 = end time of the analysis, p = instantaneous differential
pressure, A1 = cross-sectional area of the chamber, dz/dt = the rate of change of surface elevation in
the OWC

Trapezium Rule
𝑡𝑁
∆t
∫ f(t) dt = [f(t 0 ) + f(t N ) + 2f(t1 ) + 2f(t 2 ) + ⋯ + 2f(t N − 1)]
𝑡0 2
𝑑𝑧
Where 𝑓(𝑡) = pA1 𝑑𝑡 is the calculated instantaneous power, ∆t is the time interval between two
collected data points.

Power with Froude Scaling

 𝑃𝑝 pp 𝐴𝑝 𝑣𝑝
=
𝑃𝑚 pm 𝐴𝑚 𝑣𝑚
𝑃𝑝 ρp 𝑔𝑝 ℎ𝑝 𝐴𝑝 𝑣𝑝
=
𝑃𝑚 ρm 𝑔𝑚 ℎ𝑚 𝐴𝑚 𝑣𝑚
Since the water density and gravity will not be changed, ρp /ρm and g p /g m are both unity.

𝑃𝑝 ℎ𝑝 𝐴𝑝 𝑣𝑝
=
𝑃𝑚 ℎ𝑚 𝐴𝑚 𝑣𝑚
𝑃𝑝
= 𝜆 𝜆2 𝜆1/2
𝑃𝑚
𝑃𝑝 7
= 𝜆2
𝑃𝑚
Where geometrical scale factor 𝜆 = 12 is used in the experiments.

2.2 Experiment Data and Analysis

As a result of large amount of time required to conduct experiment and cost-effective, only the 16
most occurring sea states which has been highlighted in Table 1 were considered in the experiments.

Table 1 – Number of occurrences (measured every half an hour) of each sea state measured between 01/01/2010 and
31/12/2021 near Plymouth.

With respect to the instruments, the pressure transducer and resistive wave gauges were utilised in
the experiment. The former measures the pressure difference between the chamber and
atmosphere, whereas the latter measure the surface elevation of the water in the flume and inside
the OWC chamber. The pressure and wave gauge were recorded with the rate of 128 Hz for 190
seconds.

Although the pressure values collected have already been given at the gauge condition, some errors
due to the quality of instruments can be noticed while plotting the pressure over time, where the
sinusoidal curve should fluctuate around 0. The correction is necessary to be done to improve the
accuracy of the result. The average value of the pressure from first 10 second was calculated and
subtracted from the instantaneous pressure. After the correction, the average power can then be
calculated using trapezium rule as shown in Formula section. The starting start to calculate the
average power was defined as after the first sinusoidal propagation.

By knowing the occurrences of each sea state, their duration can be calculated and converted to a
year-equivalent ratio. The annual energy capture can then be estimated by multiplying the
proportional duration by the average power. Since the experiment is a model type that possesses a
geometrical scale factor of 12, the full-scale annual energy capture can be predicted using Froude
scaling, by multiplying 𝜆3.5 to the average power obtained from experiment.
3. Results
Figure 1 demonstrated the variation of annual energy capture (AEC) with 4 different orifice
diameters based on these 16 most occurring sea states. It can be realized that the annual energy
capture increases with the orifice diameter, reaching a maximum value of 148 GJ/year at an orifice
diameter of 26 mm. After that, the AEC begins to reduce as the orifice diameter enhances.

Annual Energy Capture vs Orifice Diameter

160.0

140.0
Annual Energy Capture (GJ/year)

148.4 127.4
116.4
120.0

100.0

80.0 65.9

60.0

40.0

20.0

0.0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Orifice Diameter (mm)

Figure 1 – Annual energy capture (MWh/year) with different diameter of orifice.

It is worthwhile to note that the available power increases with the wave height regardless of
different types of wave periods as depicted on Figure 2.

Wave Height vs Power

3.5

2.5
Power (W)

Tp = 1.155
2
Tp = 1.588
1.5
Tp = 2.021
1
Tp = 2.454
0.5 Tp = 2.887
0
0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12 0.14
Wave Height (m)

Figure 2 – Available power for different wave height with varying wave period.
From Figure 3, the maximum available power can be noticed at the wave period around 3.1s in both
wave height scenarios. This can be understood as the resonance effect that the excitation wave
period meets the natural period of OWC.

Power vs Wave Period at 26 mm Orifice Diameter

3.5

2.5
Power (W)

1.5 Hs=0.042
Hs=0.125
1

0.5

0
0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0
Wave Period (s)

Figure 3 – Available Power for various wave period at 26 mm orifice diameter.

4. Discussions
4.1 Part 1

4.1.1 The different orifice plate sizes at full scale & their impact on predicted Annual Energy
These different diameters of orifices represent various sizes of wind turbines as Power Take-Off
(OTP) elements that are placed over the orifices. The wind turbine is used to convert pneumatic
energy to mechanical energy (rotational motion) due to air pressure differences. This conversion for
wind turbines has the theoretical maximum efficiency as called the Betz limit. It states that at most
only 59.3% of the kinetic energy can be converted to rotational energy based on the half
deceleration occurring before and after the disc (Burton et al., 2021). This is because the air needs to
stop completely downstream to achieve a 100% efficiency wind turbine, which is impossible.
Moreover, some of the energy will be lost during the mechanical to electrical conversion and
transportation. The design imperfection may also cause a drop in efficiency and eventually lower the
useful power. More importantly, the wind turbine used by OWC is a self-rectified wind turbine,
which has a relatively lower efficiency compared to a uniaxial wind turbine. The efficiency varies
with the flow coefficient ratio due to different types of occurring wave states (Falcão and Henriques,
2016). Proper design and optimisation are required to reduce the energy loss, for example, by
adding pivoting guide vanes to minimise boundary layer separation (Liu et al., 2019).
4.1.2 Limitations of the experiments
It is interesting to note that only 16 of the most frequently occurring sea states were considered in
the annual energy capture estimation. These accounted for 89.81% of the total number of
occurrences. What can be concluded is that these results ensure the minimum annual energy
production since they are in the upper range of the occurrence matrix, from 0.5 to 1.5 m wave
height. Meanwhile, other sea states (10.19%) that are not included in the prediction are mostly
larger than 1.5 m wave height and possess a relatively larger amount of energy.

In the experiment, the water depth was fixed at 675 mm, this may not always be the case in real
offshore due to the tidal effect. This will cause the difference in OWC air chamber volume (above the
water surface) and hence, the air compressibility affects the energy absorption as called spring effect
(Mia et al., 2021). Generally, the smaller the air volume chamber, the higher the hydraulic efficiency.

By scaling-down the OWC chamber length, the hydrodynamics Reynolds Number (Reh) will become
smaller (Sheng, Alcorn and Lewis, 2014). Therefore, the viscosity effect plays an important role in
contributing to the flow oscillation in the chamber. The available energy is expected to be smaller as
a result of the smaller wave oscillation amplitude. Moreover, the vortex shedding, and flow
separation leading to energy dissipation in the model may exhibit more patterns and characteristics
than that of the prototype. It is worthwhile to note that the change of wave height and period does
not affect the Reh referred to in Appendix I. As mentioned above, the aerodynamic Reynolds
Number (Re0) also has similar effects.

Last but not least, scaling-down the dimension of the orifice may also decrease the orifice discharge
coefficient, which is a function of flow rate. Furthermore, the PTO damping coefficient will be
reduced when scaling-down the orifice dimensions. These behaviours will under-predict the actual
energy absorption that is available.

4.3 The effect of changing the length of Water Column

The length of the water column is inversely proportional to the natural frequency of water column.
In order to enhance the annual energy capture from the OWC, the characteristic of resonance that
increases either the pressure or wave height amplitude in the chamber can be considered in the
design. By doing so, the natural period of the water column can be designed to match the heave
natural period.
4.2 Part 2 – Hybrid Devices

4.2.1 Advantages and Disadvantages of a hybrid wind / wave system (compared to wind only
devices)
There are several advantages to a hybrid wind-wave system over a wind only device. First of all, two
energy sources including wave and wind can be converted into useful energy simultaneously. It is
worthwhile to note that more energy can be obtained from wave due to the higher density of water
compared to air. In a no-wind scenario, the supplement of electricity may experience power
interruptions for wind only devices (McTiernan, 2020). However, in a hybrid wind-wave system,
electricity can still be generated from the waves, achieving power consistency. A hybrid wind-wave
device could provide power sources for each other. For example, the power obtained from the wave
can be utilised to adjust the pitch angle of the offshore wind turbine, so that it accomplishes the
optimal operation.

As a result of the combination of floating wave energy converters and offshore wind turbines
reducing the wave field, the motion of offshore wind planforms can be passively suppressed (Dong
et al., 2022). More importantly, the reduction of this motion improves the lifespan, particularly for
fatigue loads failure. The efficiency of the offshore wind turbine can also be increased due to more
stable hub motion.

One of the obvious benefits for hybrid wind-wave device is optimised use of marine space. The
integrated system reduces the area required for generating power, increasing the power output per
unit area, thereby enhancing the acceptance of the renewable device among other marine users and
less viewshed impact.

Last but not least, the implementation of hybrid wind-wave devices reduces the levelized cost of
energy. For example, the foundation, mooring and grid connections can be shared to complete the
power production. These reduce not only the fabrication and implementation costs but also power
losses during electricity transmission and transportation.

Some of the disadvantages of hybrid wind-wave devices cannot be ignored. It can only be
implemented near the ocean, unlike the wind only device which can be installed either onshore or
offshore. The hybrid wind-wave device could also affect the marine ecosystem, for example, by
creating noise, toxic chemicals due to lubrication leakage and thus polluting the ocean (Conserve
Energy Future, 2016). In some areas where the wave behaviour is not predictable, the overall
structure could be damaged by extremely strong waves.

Furthermore, a hybrid wind-wave device requires a large amount of costs for construction,
consisting of jacket or tripod for a fixed device and spar with mooring line for a floating device. The
implementation and processes become difficult and huge costs are required to complete the
maintenance.

4.2.2 Additional engineering challenges using a hybrid device

Nowadays, for hybrid wind-wave device, only 10-50% of the ideal condition (1MW) can be produced
and usually smaller than the wind only turbine to ensure the safety of hybrid device (McTiernan,
2020). Unlike the wind turbine only, most wind turbines are horizontal and occupies similar design
specifications. Due to additional structural loading, a hybrid wind-wave device requires higher
standard of the design specifications for the overall structure, especially for the sub-systems or
foundation. As a result of the immature of WECs, there are a lot of design uncertainties such as
dynamic response and experiences that have not been studied and converged thoroughly.
Tremendous amount of design optimisation must be done in the future to maximise energy capture.

For a hybrid device, the control system become more sophisticated to ensure the stability and
efficiency of the device. For example, not only the wind turbine needs to adjust the pitch and yaw of
the wind turbine blades, but also control the direction of the wave energy device, in reaction to
shifting wind and wave conditions.

It is interesting to note that a fixed hybrid device is not appropriate for deep water oceans due to
the massive length of the grid and frame. In this case, the floating hybrid device is an excellent
choice to capture the energy. However, stability is a crucial challenge for this kind of device, as the
foundation structure allows a greater degree of freedom, which allows motion that could
significantly deteriorate the performance of the wind turbine mounted on top of the foundation.
More importantly, the structural integrity of the wind turbine in terms of fatigue failure and dynamic
external loads will be affected.

4.2.3 Influence the design of a floating ORE array

It can be noticed that the commercial wind only turbine configurations are in staggered arrays, such
as the London Array, as they usually produce the greatest power output (Nwanze et al., no date).
The reason causing distinct power coefficient is mainly the wind wake occurred at the downstream
of the rotor, where wind speed is reduced. According to the research (Yong and Shengli, 2016), a
new array developed by the WindMax focusing on wake loss has better overall power efficiency than
that of the optimised array for a wind-only farm. What can be concluded is that these devices are
subjected to dissimilarly multiple responses in terms of wind orientation and wave propagation.
Hence, the appropriate array for a hybrid or wind only device varies according to these individually
different scenarios.

In addition, the required space between the hybrid floating wind-wave devices can be reduced
compared to a wind only device. This is fundamentally because the WECs protect the offshore wind
turbine from the vibrations caused by waves. A more stable OWT generates a smoother and more
consistent wind wake (Wang, Liu and Wang, 2022). Hence, the wind wake effect can be minimised
and requires a lesser distance to recover. Therefore, the area required for hybrid floating wind-wave
devices can be decreased while maintaining the same amount of power or even more.

4.2.4 Short description on the recent advancements in the hybrid devices

Apart from wave and wind hybrid devices, a great potential of hybrid wind and solar device has been
proposed by López, Rodríguez & Iglesias (2020) and a case study in Asturias, Spain has been done.
These systems enable the simultaneous capture of solar and wind energy through the incorporation
of solar panels into the wind turbine’s support structure. The combination of offshore wind turbine
and floating solar photovoltaics (FPV) increases 10 times of capacity density compared to the
conventional wind-only devices, thereby enhances the power extraction per unit area with an
increase of 7 times. Moreover, the solar and wind energy are composed of each other under
extremely condition and ensure the consistency of power production. Similarly, a showcase of
hybrid device capturing wave, wind and solar energy was suggested by the SINN Power (Funk, 2021).

Furthermore, the concept of the tidal-wave energy converter has been proposed by Silva et al.
(2023). The combination of a wave floating point-absorber and two vertical hydrokinetic turbines
has the capability to capture wave and tidal energy simultaneously, convert them to rotational
motion and produce electricity. The research has proved that the same occupied area can produce
1.5 times as much power.
4.2.5 Costs to change between a wind only array and a hybrid array
Although the upfront costs of a hybrid array would increase due to additional components and
complexities, there are several of capital costs, including materials, assembly, installation, and
labour, can be greatly reduced. First of all, the foundation, tower and mooring of the hybrid device
can be shared, decreasing almost half of the cost related to support structure. Additionally, a
majority of the cost for offshore infrastructure derives from the electrical grids, with offshore
substations (48%) and cabling (34%) (LandeSudall, Stallard and Stansby, 2019). A hybrid array could
share the same export cabling with a small number of branches to achieve electricity transportation.
Hence, the power to cost ratio can be tremendously enhanced. More importantly, the overall
installation cost plays a crucial role in implementation considerations. Reducing the volume of the
foundations and cables eases the difficulties of installation. Therefore, the required cost can be
decreased in terms of transportation and time consumption, thereby lowering the labour cost.

5. Conclusion
In conclusion, the oscillating water column (OWC) is a feasible technology for capturing renewable
energy from waves. The experiment with a geometrical scale-down factor of 12 using Froude scaling
has been completed successfully. Furthermore, the effect of different sizes of orifice plates on the
annual energy capture has been investigated and discussed based on the real wave states near
Plymouth provided by the Channel Coastal Observatory. Some of the limitations during analysis and
experiments, particularly for scaling effects have also been reviewed to comprehend the accuracy of
the results.

A comprehensive summary of the hybrid wave-wind device has been discussed in many aspects,
consisting of pros and cons, anda engineering challenges compared to a wind only device. Finally,
the influences of the array in terms of design configuration and cost changes for hybrid devices have
also been covered and compared to the wind only array. Apart from wave and wind devices, some
recent developments in hybrid devices in the Offshore Renewable Energy sector were reviewed.
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7. Appendices
7.1 Appendix I
Hydrodynamics Reynold Number (Fitzgerald and Bergdahl, 2009)
𝜌𝜔𝐴𝑤 𝐿
𝑅𝑒ℎ =
𝜇
Where 𝐴𝑤 = amplitude of the incoming wave, 𝜔 = angular frequency (rad/s)

It is interesting to note that the down-scale of wave period, which is inversely proportional to
angular frequency, increases the Reynold Number. However, the wave height was also reduced in
the experiment, which decrease the Reynold Number. Therefore, it can be noticed that both
parameters compensate each other and make no different to the Reynold Number. Only the
characteristic length affects the hydrodynamic Reynold Number.