Contributions to the Technical Assessment of Wave Energy in Portugal: The Case of Pico (Azores)

Ocean waves have a high potential to become a reference among the renewable energies with economic viability, in the future. Currently, there is in Portugal a WaveRoller technology experimental facility delivering power to the grid. However, Oscillating Water Column (OWC) is the most used technology to capture the energy from the waves. In this paper, a full integrated model of an OWC installation is presented. This model incorporates dedicated models of its components: pneumatic chamber, Wells turbine and Doubly Fed Induction Generator (DFIG). Data to feed the model is taken from Pico (Azores) power plant. The implementation in MATLAB®/Simulink® environment allows to carry on some simulations, regarding the behavior of the OWC system in the presence of pressure increases in the pneumatic chamber (meaning a higher airflow in the turbine). The results allow the conclusion that the speed control feature is crucial to obtain an optimized operation of the system.