OES: Wave energy modeling findings released

An international group of experts, working together on the validation of numerical modelling tools for wave energy converters, have presented their first phase findings.

Working under the auspices of the Ocean Energy Systems (OES) Technology Collaboration Programme of the International Energy Agency, the researchers chose a heaving sphere as the first test case.

The team simulated different numerical experiments, such as heave decay tests and regular and irregular wave cases. An overview of some of the significant findings achieved by the international team are summarized on OES website.

The importance of developing a collaborative task on numerical code validation for wave energy converters was first proposed in 2015 by the USA delegate, Bob Thresher, from National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the United States and approved as a new joint Task by the OES Executive Committee in 2016.

The task leader, Kim Nielsen from Ramboll, says: “International collaboration should be strengthened and encouraged to bring talented teams together to tackle challenges on wave energy. Task 10 is playing a key role in facilitating high quality research through joint collaborative efforts on an international level.”

Initial results were presented at the European Wave and Tidal Energy Conference (EWTEC), held in Ireland in late August 2017 and published in a joint paper prepared by 13 countries with experts from academia and industry.

The project is about to launch into its second phase, which will incorporate a validation aspect by including experimental test data from a heaving, surface piercing wave energy system that was tested at the US Navy MASK basin in 2016, during a test campaign led by Sandia National Laboratories.

With this new project phase the group is hoping to further improve the confidence and accuracy of numerical models for wave energy converters and to identify future research needs for computational tools.

OES is an intergovernmental collaboration between countries, which has 24 member countries and the European Commission with a number of other observer countries in the process of joining.

The aim of OES is to advance research, development and demonstration of conversion technologies that harness energy from all forms of ocean renewable resources.