ABSTRACT
Due to the natural fluctuation of the wave energy resource, the power output from a single Wave Energy Converter (WEC) is also fluctuating. Injecting energy into the grid is only allowed if the power oscillation is contained within the boundary specified in the grid code. It is common practice to include energy storage elements in the system, such as flywheel or capacitor. But to reduce the design requirements on these extra and expensive elements a sensible approach is to identify the possible alternative to mitigate the power fluctuation. In this study, the influence of the array layout into the absorbed power fluctuation is investigated using a multi-objective optimization algorithm. For the case study adopted it has been noticed that in some condition the power fluctuation can be mitigated by a factor 2-5 with only a marginal reduction of the absorbed energy, only by playing with the device positioning.
