Design and Modelling of Portable Pico Linear Generator for Wave Energy Conversion

The increasing energy demand has triggered worldwide search of an alternative energy. In addition, many renewable resources are now being developed as they are cheaper and more environmental friendly. The alternative energy sources include the energy harvested from solar, biomass, geothermal, tidal and wave. This research mainly focused on wave energy where many technologies are available for wave energy converter but most of them are huge and suitable only for large application. Thus, a portable Pico generator is designed for this project, which focuses on small scale application such as for lighting and outdoor activities. The objectives of this work are to design and develop a portable generator weighed about 25 kg, that can produce approximately 100 W. The configuration of the generator is selected and chosen based on the process of conducting a thorough literature review on the configurations of stator and magnetization, and the structure of the magnet. All these configurations were implemented on three proposed designs, while one of them was used as a reference as it has been already designed before. The design was proposed by keeping several criteria constant while varying the shape of the magnet. Preliminary result was obtained by performing simulation and analysis to all the proposed designs using ANSYS Maxwell software. The designs were further improved and optimized to increase the performance of the portable generator. Finally, cost analysis has been done on material for each design generator.