Abstract: Wave energy inspired mankind for a long period in time to invent principles, that allow the use of this apparently unlimited resource of energy. Many technologies have been thought of to convert the power of the waves into electrical current. Unfortunately only a few of these ideas have been realized up to a prototype stage, so that they couldn’t be properly engineered and finally advance to a marketable product.
This paper emphasizes the fact that prototype operation of a technology is one of the most important and necessary step in developing a wave energy converter. Multiple parallel principles may exist, but what really brings a technology into a marketable product stage is the iteration cycle of design and operation of prototypes that are based on a sound principle. This process will exemplarily be shown for the development of an Oscillating Water Column (OWC) wave energy converter (WEC) using a Wells turbine.
