Output details

An innovative approach for energy generation from waves

The paper describes the engineering design and development of a novel wave-power generation system developed jointly by Ocean Navitas Ltd and a team at NTU led by Su. The NTU team focused on two aspects of the system: (i)the ‘Aegir Dynamo’ which is a geared system that transforms wave movement into electricity, and (ii)modelling and measurement of the performance of a wave-power generator. The Aegir Dynamo, converts the waves’ bidirectional vertical movement to a unidirectional movement in the generator.

The work was sponsored by a regional development agency ‘Stimulation for Innovation Success’ (SIS) grant. This new system is more compact and easier to manufacture than existing commercial systems , and is covered by a patent (GB1003349.6).

The NTU team refined the concept, conducting detail design of the device’s structure and mechanics, through strength analysis and computer aided design and simulation. Due to commercial confidentiality, the details of the exact design of the gearing system are not given in the paper. However, the NTU expertise was used in:

- the design of a novel gearing system which has been experimentally validated and presented in the paper.

- analysing the performance and the behaviour of the system for the complete design and its response to waves and energy demand. This contained two very novel approaches in engineering design:

1. The team successfully developed better simulation methods by taking the wave patterns and feeding them to the mechanical simulator in order to experimentally evaluate the response.

2. Depending on the power generation demand, the response of the generator differs and is a very complex. This research has successfully developed an experimental evaluation method of the generator’s performance in this situation.

- the modelling techniques to allow the company to precisely assess proposed generation sites.