Steps towards commercialization of new power buoy with pivoting arm LOPF

The fully instrumented Lever Operated Pivoting Float LOPF wave energy buoy model has gone through the first stage of testing in regular waves in scale 1:25 of the North Sea wave conditions, in the 3D deep wave basin at the Hydraulic and Coastal Engineering Laboratory of Aalborg University. Some direct measurements from the model device are: voltage output, the torque on the generator, the arm bending moment produced by the mooring line and the absolute angle of the pivoting float. These allowed to follow the conversion of power in the power train from mechanic to electric power, the identification of areas for improvements and the preliminary result revealing that it is expected that a 15 m buoy in North Sea conditions will generate between 222 MWh/y and 723 MWh/y, depending on the degree of improvement achieved from the first model.