Impact of extreme events on conversion efficiency of wave energy converter

Abstract

Uncontrolled high emission of greenhouse gases due to the use of fossil fuels has high impact on global warming. Due to this global warming, the earth's temperature is increasing and consequently has changed the patterns of various natural phenomena such as wave height and wind speed. Wave power energy resources are ideal alternative to reduce the effects of global warming and climate change. One of the major obstacles lies in the fact that the occurrence of extreme events can jeopardize the wave power plant suspended in the ocean waves. In order to better understand the impact of extreme events on the wave energy generation, a comprehensive analysis of utilization efficiency of wave energy converters with respect to extreme events was conducted in the present investigation with the help of utilization efficiency function (UEF) as an indicative index function. The effect of the extreme events was simulated by the polynomial neural network (PNN) architectures, and change in UEF in the future scenarios was noted. According to the results, the maximum impact on the utilization efficiency of the WEC was observed in the time slab of 2050-2060, where 5.1% change in utilization efficiency was observed.