Estimation of Downtime and of Missed Energy Associated with a Wave Energy Converter by the Equivalent Power Storm Model

The design of any wave energy converter involves the determination of relevant statistical data on the wave energy resource oriented to the evaluation of the structural reliability and energy performance of the device. Currently, limited discussions concern the estimation of parameters connected to the energy performance of a device. Thus, this paper proposes a methodology for determining average downtime and average missed energy, which is the energy that is not harvested because of device deactivations during severe sea storms. These quantities are fundamental for evaluating the expected inactivity of a device during a year or during its lifetime and are relevant for assessing the effectiveness of a device working at a certain site. For this purpose, the equivalent power storm method is used for their derivation, starting from concepts pertaining to long-term statistical analysis. The paper shows that the proposed solutions provide reliable estimations via comparison with results obtained by processing long wave data.