A point absorbing wave energy converter (WEC) is a complicated dynamical system. A semi-submerged buoy drives a power take-off device (PTO), which acts as a linear or non-linear damper of the WEC system. The buoy motion depends on the buoy geometry and dimensions, the mass of the moving parts of the system and on the damping force from the generator. The electromagnetic damping in the generator depends on both the generator specifications, the connected load and the buoy velocity. In this paper a velocity ratio has been used to study how the geometric parameters buoy draft and radius, assuming constant generator damping coefficient, affects the motion and the energy absorption of a WEC. It have been concluded that an optimal buoy geometry can be identified for a specific generator damping. The simulated WEC performance have been compared with experimental values from two WECs with similar generators but different buoys. Conclusions have been drawn about their behaviour.

The cross regulation effect in multi‐output DC/DC converters offers a reliable support for the grid integration of multilevel inverters by balancing the capacitor voltages. The capacitor voltage balancing by single input dual output boost converter is often realised by conventional three‐level switching scheme. The three‐level operation benefits lower inductor ripple current, but it limits the maximum possible compensation voltages. In this study, the entire operating modes of the boost converter is presented and all the possible cases which contribute to the voltage balancing are employed for balancing the capacitor voltages in a three‐level neutral point clamped inverter. A proportional‐integral controller based duty ratio control and pulse delay control are used for DC link voltage regulation and capacitor voltage balancing. Since the classical state‐space averaging technique is not suitable for SIDO converters, inductor current ripple averaging technique is utilised for controller design. The circuit simulation is performed in Matlab/Simulink. The digital controller is realised using the Virtex‐5FPGA in Labview/CompactRIO module. Both simulation and experimental results are presented to validate the controller performance.

This study presents the dynamic modelling of a linear permanent magnet generator for extracting energy from ocean waves. Translator position, calculated from measured generator voltage, is used as input for the simulation model. Instantaneous power from the simulation model has been compared with the measurements from the Lysekil research site. The power output from the model considering the air gap flux variation is precisely matching with the measured values before core saturation. The generator dynamic model is modified by including the saturation effect. Although a simple mathematical expression is considered for representing the saturation, the model gives accurate power spectrum close to the experimental results. The presented model is a first step towards the system model that can simulate the entire electric system including electric grid. As such, the generator model can be used for further analysis of the wave energy conversion system.

This paper presents a synchronous current control method for a three-level neutral point clamped inverter. Synchronous reference frame control based on two decoupled proportional-integral (PI) controllers is used to control the current in direct and quadrature axes. A phase disposition pulse width modulation (PDPWM) method in regular symmetrical sampling is used for generating the inverter switching signals. To eliminate the harmonic content with no phase errors, two first-order low pass filters (LPFs) are used for the dq currents. The simulation of closed-loop control is done in Matlab/Simulink. The Vertex-5 field programmable gate array (FPGA) in Labview/CompactRio is used for the implementation of the control algorithm. The control and switch pulse generation are done in independent parallel loops. The synchronization of both loops is achieved by controlling the length of waiting time for each loop. The simulation results are validated with experiments. The results show that the control action is reliable and efficient for the load current control.