This paper provides a status update on the development of the Swedish wave energy research area located close to Lysekil on the Swedish West coast. The Lysekil project is run by the Centre for Renewable Electric Energy Conversion at Uppsala University. The project was started in 2004 and currently has permission to run until the end of 2013. During this time period 10 grid-connected wave energy converters, 30 buoys for studies on environmental impact, and a surveillance tower for monitoring the interaction between waves and converters will be installed and studied. To date the research area holds one complete wave energy converter connected to a measuring station on shore via a sea cable, a Wave Rider TM buoy for wave measurements, 25 buoys for studies on environmental impact, and a surveillance tower. The wave energy converter is based on a linear synchronous generator which is placed on the sea bed and driven by a heaving point absorber at the ocean surface. The converter is directly driven, i.e. it has no gearbox or other mechanical or hydraulic conversion system. This results in a simple and robust mechanical system, but also in a somewhat more complicated electrical system.

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This is an author produced version of a paper published in IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering. This paper has been peer-reviewed but does not include the final publisher proof-corrections or journal pagination. Access to the published version may require subscription.© 2010 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works. Abstract-This paper investigates the sensitivity of a wave power system to variations in still water levels and significant wave heights. The system consists of a floating point absorber connected to a linear generator on the seabed. Changing still water levels are expected to affect the power absorption, since they will displace the equilibrium position for the generator translator. Similarly, changing significant wave heights will affect the rate at which the translator leaves the stator. Both these effects will in some cases result in a smaller active area of the stator. A theoretical expression to describe this effect is derived, and compared to measured experimental values for the wave energy converter L1 at the Lysekil research site. During the time of measurements, the still water levels at the site were in the range of [-0.70

This is an author produced version of a paper published in IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering. This paper has been peer-reviewed but does not include the final publisher proof-corrections or journal pagination. Abstract-For a complete understanding of a wave energy conversion device, it is important to know how the proposed device moves in the water, how this motion can be measured, and to what extent the motion can be predicted or simulated. The magnitude and character of the motion has impacts on engineering issues and optimization of control parameters, as well as the theoretical understanding of the system. This paper presents real sea measurements of buoy motion and translator motion for a wave energy system using a linear generator. Buoy motion has been measured using two different systems: a landbased optical system and a buoy based accelerometer system. The data has been compared to simulations from a Simulink model for the entire system. The two real sea measurements of buoy motion have been found to correlate well in the vertical direction, where the measured range of motion and the standard deviation of the position distributions differed with 3 and 4 cm respectively. The difference in the horizontal direction is more substantial. The main reason for this is that the buoy rotation about its axis of symmetry was not measured. However, used together the two systems give a good understanding of buoy motion. In a first comparison, the simulations show good agreement with the measured motion for both translator and buoy.

An offshore wave energy converter (WEC) was successfully launched at the Swedish west coast in the middle of March 2006. The WEC is based on a permanent magnet linear generator located on the sea floor driven by a point absorber. A measuring station has been installed on a nearby island where all measurements and experiments on the WEC have been carried out. The output voltage from the generator fluctuates both in amplitude and frequency and must therefore be converted to enable grid connection. In order to study the voltage conversion, the measuring station was fitted with a six pulse diode rectifier and a capacitive filter during the autumn of 2006. The object of this paper is to present a detailed description of the Lysekil research site. Special attention will be given to the power absorption by the generator when it is connected to a nonlinear load.