PerAWaT - SpecWec Beta Version Release

Abstract:

The Performance Assessment of Wave and Tidal Array Systems (PerAWaT) project, launched in October 2009 with £8m of ETI investment. The project delivered validated, commercial software tools capable of significantly reducing the levels of uncertainty associated with predicting the energy yield of major wave and tidal stream energy arrays. It also produced information that will help reduce commercial risk of future large scale wave and tidal array developments.

The purpose of this deliverable is to describe the beta release of the SpecWEC software tool. As the SpecWEC tool is a modification of the existing TOMAWAC ocean spectral wave model that includes a representation of wave energy converters, the document describes the changes that were made to the TOMAWAC base model to create the SpecWEC tool. These changes were broken down into four core elements: representation ofWave Energy Converter (WEC) performance, input of WEC parameters, specification of WEC location, and output of WEC parameters. The document also includes full documentation of the test cases which were carried out to verify the functionality of each core element, and describes the verification of the SpecWEC tool, including four test cases which were run to demonstrate the successful integration of the four core elements. User instructions for the beta release are included. These include a description of how the user can create an executable from the provided files; create their own source term subroutine for the representation of WEC performance, or use one of the two provided source term subroutines (which have a simple linear frequency/directional dependence on the spectral wave energy of a point absorber representation); and run the tool, including the preparation of input files necessary to run the two provided source term subroutines.

Publication Year:

2011

Publisher:

ETI

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5286/ukerc.edc.000405

Author(s):

Queen’s University Belfast