Study on Mobile Wave Energy Harvesting System Utilizing Wave Glider Mechanism

This paper reports a novel mobile-type wave energy harvesting system. The proposed system adopts a wave glider’s propulsion mechanism. A wave glider’s blades were mounted on a circular layout and generated a rotational motion. Combining the wave converting system with the wave glider, a mobile floating-type robotic buoy system was developed. It enabled the relocation of the buoy position, as well as station-keeping for long term operation. It had a small size and could efficiently harvest wave energy. A feasibility study and modeling were carried out, and a prototype system was constructed. Various tank tests were performed to optimize the proposed wave energy harvesting system. Received 20 July 2018, revised 24 September 2018, accepted 18 October 2018 Corresponding author Son-Cheol Yu: +82-54-279-9504, sncyu@postech.ac.kr ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5654-1816 It is noted that this paper is revised edition based on proceedings of KMRTS 2018 in Daejeon c 2018, The Korean Society of Ocean Engineers This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution non-commercial license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.