The consumption of energy from the past decade had arisen sharply in terms of the development of the country, society and economy. The depletion of convectional energy and its effect on the climate had given a new search of energy [1]. In the Pacific, Fiji is one of the fastest developing countries, in terms of economic, transportation and population, however, Fiji is highly dependent on importing of fossil fuel as source of energy for transportation and industries. Government policies in Fiji are strengthening and plans are put in place to increase renewable energy in the energy mix by 90% by 2025&nbsp;[2,3]. Among this development, much of the efforts are focused on the development of wave energy converter to extract energy from the waves generated in the sea.A novel wave energy converter (WEC) was designed, fabricated and tested experimentally in the wave channel. The wave channel produced two dimensional sinusoidal waves from the generator. Experimental study on the novel WEC was carried out at the different wave frequency ranging from 0.7 Hz to 1 Hz and at five different water depths of 240 mm, 260 mm, 270 mm and 280 mm. A flywheel is utilized as an energy storage system in this study. It provides an improved way of power output from the system, even with intermittent input of the incoming waves. The use of the backwall helps the novel WEC to move the same distance during the back stroke as it achieved during the front stroke to complete the cycle. The maximum stroke length was 90 mm at back wall distance of 200 mm with the clearance of 50 mm from the bottom.&nbsp;. It was found that the wavelength decreases and wave height increases with increasing wave frequency.&nbsp;Further, it is noted that the torque of the flywheel increases as the frequency and water depth increases. The optimum angle of the backwall placement was 14º and the maximum power output of 4.79 watt was achieved at a frequency of 1 Hz and at a water depth of 280 mm. An efficiency of 5.31% was achieved for the designed novel WEC.This piston wave energy converter is a prototype at this stage and requires more design analysis and testing for further development.REFERENCES[1]. Falnes, J., 2007, “A review of wave-energy extraction”, Marine Structure, Vol. 20, pp. 185-201.[2]. FEA, 2009, “Fiji electricity authority annual report,” Fiji Electricity Authority (FEA).[3].&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; IRENA, 2012, “IRENA Policy brief: policy challenges for renewable energy deployment in pacific island countries and territories,” International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

Design, Fabrication and Testing of a Novel Wave Energy Converter

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IMECE/IMECE2021/volume/85543

ASME 2021 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE2021)

Supporting the need among researchers worldwide for additional online and multimedia content, ASME now offers the ASME Conference Video Collection. This platform will collect and provide long-term access to conference presentation videos, encompassing all technology areas within ASME's technical conference and events program. About 30,000-40,000 engineers across all mechanical engineering and related disciplines participate in ASME conferences each year. This includes authors of approximately 6,000 to 8,000 technical papers published by ASME, the majority of whom also submit video presentations for our virtual conferences. The video collection will be available as an add-on to existing product packages or as a separate subscription.