Application of Secondary Control Hydrostatic Transmission in A Multi-Point Absorbing Wave Energy Converter

This paper presents a novel concept of wave energy converter for electric generation from the ocean wave energy. In this paper, a Multi-Point Absorbing Wave Energy Converter, shortened as MPAWEC by using Secondary Control Hydrostatic Transmission (SCHST) was proposed. The power take-off (PTO) system in the proposed MPAWEC includes multi heaving buoys to drive hydraulic pumps placed at different points. The application of SCHST in MPAWEC gives some advantages, such as longevity of hydraulic components; more energy is harvested; the variation of the pressure in the accumulator limited; therefore the accumulator volume is reduced and the output speed is more stable, etc. A PID controller was designed for speed control of the hydraulic motor. The simulation results indicated that the speed of the generator was ensured with the relative error as 0.67%; the efficiency of the proposed system was 71.4%.