DESIGN AND MODELLING OF A LINEAR GENERATOR FOR WAVE ENERGY CONVERSIONS

The positive development in science and technology nowadays has allowed us to harness energy from renewable sources. Much attention is given to wave energy as it holds enormous amount of untapped energy and it has a great potential in electricity generation these days. There are several methods in harnessing energy from wave such as oscillating water column, overtopping device, hinged contour device and floating buoy technologies. Existing linear generators used in Wave Energy Converters (WEC) are in large scale. This phenomenon has been limiting some end- users like fishermen from benefiting from this. Therefore, an inexpensive, small-scaled, mobile and efficient power producing system is needed. In this report, the Wave Energy Converter (WEC) that is used is the floating buoy method where the buoy is attached to the rope and a linear generator installed at the sea bed. A linear generator with the permanent magnet, tubular orientation, and iron-cored stator is proposed to be installed to the floating buoy WEC. The magnets have been used as the moving part where two new shapes of magnet were introduced; i.e. triangular shape and trapezium shape. The models have been simulated and analyzed using finite element software Ansoft Maxwell. The open-flux, air gap flux and back EMF distributions were investigated for two different designs. The results obtained were further analyzed where the design is further optimized for continuous improvement to achieve the best configuration of the linear generator