Holistic Design of Small-Scale Oscillating Water Column in Stand-Alone DC Microgrid

Oscillating water column (OWC) technology is one of the most popular wave energy converters (WECs) that converts ocean wave energy into electrical energy. Currently, most of the development and implementation of the OWCs have focused on large-scale design. Instead, this paper suggests a holistic design of a small-scale OWC system because the small-scale OWC model is less exploited yet. The small-scale OWC system can be utilized as an inexpensive modular device in the DC microgrid. For the holistic design of the small-scale OWC, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis is performed to design the Wells turbine that is applicable to the small-scale OWC device. Then, the Electromagnetic-Transient (EMT) based power system simulation examines the electric conversion and control of the small-scale OWC system. Furthermore, the EMT-based power system simulation tests and verifies the system dynamics and stability of the small-scale OWC system in the stand-alone DC microgrid.