Experimental Study on Load Characteristics in a Floating Type Pendulum Wave Energy Converter

A floating type pendulum wave energy converter (FPWEC) with a rotary vane pump as the power take-off system was proposed by Watabe et al. in 1998. They showed that this device had high energy conversion efficiency. In the previous research, the authors conducted 2D wave tank tests in regular waves to evaluate the generating efficiency of FPWEC with a power take-off system composed of pulleys, belts and a generator. As a result, the influence of the electrical load on the generating efficiency was shown. Continuously, the load characteristics of FPWEC are pursued experimentally by using the servo motors to change the damping coefficient in this paper. In a later part of this paper, the motions of the model with the servo motors are compared with that of the case with the same power take-off system as the previous research. From the above experiment, it may be concluded that the maximum primary conversion efficiency is achieved as high as 98% at the optimal load.