Numerical comparison between deep water and intermediate water depth expressions applied to a wave energy converter

The energy that can be captured from the sea waves and converted into electricity should be seen as a contribution to decrease the excessive dependency and growing demand of fossil fuels. Devices suitable to harness this kind of renewable energy source and convert it into electricity—wave energy converters (WECs)—are not yet commercially competitive. There are several types of WECs, with different designs and working principles. One possible classification is their distance to the shoreline and thus their depth. Near-shore devices are one of them since they are typically deployed at intermediate water depth (IWD). The selection of the WEC deployment site should be a balance between several parameters; water depth is one of them. Another way of classifying WECs is grouping them by their geometry, size and orientation. Considering a near-shore WEC belonging to the floating point category, this paper is focused on the numerical study about the differences arising in the power captured from the sea waves when the typical deep water (DW) assumption is compared with the more realistic IWD consideration. Actually, the production of electricity will depend, among other issues, on the depth of the deployment site. The development of a dynamic model including specific equations for the usual DW assumption as well as for IWD is also described. Derived equations were used to build a time domain simulator (TDS). Numerical results were obtained by means of simulations performed using the TDS. The objective is to simulate the dynamic behavior of the WEC due to the action of sea waves and to characterize the wave power variations according with the depth of the deployment site.