Study of the operation characteristics of a point absorbing direct driven permanent magnet linear generator deployed in the Baltic Sea

To experimentally study how a wave energy converter (WEC) behaves when parameters such as weighton the translator and buoy volume are changing is of significant importance whentrying to optimise the WEC system. This study presents results from a WECdeployed at the Baltic Sea near the island of Åland. Compared with earlierexperiments, the weight on the translator has been significantly increased tosuit the buoy volume. Experimental results show that the power output betweenthe upward and the downward motions are comparable up to the maximum speed forthe downward motion of the translator. To study the speed of the translator indownward direction a model has been derived. The model has also been used tostudy the impact of having a changing active area. Moreover, finite element (FE) simulations done on the generator have been compared withexperimental data and show a good agreement, but at high speeds of thetranslator the FE simulations start to deviate from theexperiments.