INCIDENCE OF WAVE CLIMATE ON POINT ABSORBER GEOMETRY FOR OPTIMUM WEC CONFIGURATION

A cost-based design and selection procedure for heaving point absorbers deployed in the Mediterranean Sea is discussed and applied, focusing on two candidate deployment sites, namely Alghero and Mazara del Vallo. The selected device is a point absorber with bullet-type configuration, coupled to an optional fully submerged mass to properly match the device heave natural frequency with the prevailing one at the deployment site and connected to a permanent magnet linear generator, lying on the seabed. The applied hydrodynamic model is briefly discussed, mainly focusing on the incidence of PTO free stroke length on the device absorbed power and the WEC operational profile. Hence, optimum WEC configurations, without and with the fully submerged mass, are detected, finding that deployment sites with quite different mean wave energy fluxes are characterized by almost the same Levelised Cost of Energy, if floating buoy dimensions are properly selected.