Project detail
Wavw Energy Converter for Drifter Applications - WECDA: WEC performance test under different sea conditions
Duration: 1.5.2025 — 31.12.2025
Funding resources
Evropská unie - European Research Infrastructure Consortium
On the project
Ocean monitoring requirements have fomented the evolution of sensor platforms such as Lagrangian drifters, whose autonomy is a critical factor in the design process. Energy Harvesting (EH) has proven to be a sound option as an autonomous power source for sensor platforms. Solar panels have been the most common commercial EH solution to expand a drifter’s autonomy (Sofar: Spotter, Fastwave: Voyager Solar). Drifters must however avoid the impact of the wind because this may compromise a proper superficial current tracking. Consequently, they must be mostly submerged, thus interfering with the feasibility of solar harvesting. Also, depending on a single EH source has little effect on making the drifter more autonomous. For this reason, this proposal focuses on exploring the possibility of harvesting the oscillatory movement of the drifter itself caused by the interaction with the ocean waves, which has not been thoroughly studied yet. Understanding the interaction between the drifter and the water load is essential to properly design a wave energy converter (WEC). Often, the captured energy is maximized by properly designing the inner WEC with a natural frequency close to that of the drifter's movement. The aim is to achieve resonance between the WEC and the drifter’s motion in order to maximize the amplitude of the former’s moving parts and increase the harvested energy.
Mark
EMSO ERIC - WECDA
Default language
English
People responsible
Hadaš Zdeněk, prof. Ing., Ph.D. - principal person responsible
Units
Institute of Automation and Computer Science
- responsible department (21.5.2025 - not assigned)
Institute of Automation and Computer Science
- beneficiary (21.5.2025 - not assigned)
Responsibility: Hadaš Zdeněk, prof. Ing., Ph.D.