In a world trying to wean itself off of fossil fuels, power generation from other sources is becoming ever more important. Energy collected from ocean waves is getting increasing attention. The most common method employed in ocean energy harvesting is based on electromagnetic generators. These devices unquestionably work but they depend upon there being big waves to be effective. This has made them successful in places with choppy waters but lots of locations need energy and only have small waves for most of the time. These small waves carry energy too but are being ignored. Now new work is revealing a clever way to tap them.
Designed for catching some waves…
The device that the team behind this work have created is essentially a pendulum generator with a gear in the centre that is connected to the pendulum and a flywheel attached to a gear on either side of it. What makes this device special is that the gear in the centre is incomplete on one side. In other words, roughly one third of the gear lacks teeth (take a look at the image). This means it only makes contact with one flywheel gear when ocean waves are weak. However, when the waves get large, the pendulum swings far enough to drive the teeth of the incomplete gear to reach the second flywheel gear. At this point, both flywheels are being driven into action and creating resistance for the central incomplete gear.
The whole thing is rather cunning in that the contact with just a single flywheel keeps resistance low when waves are calm and thus is supportive of rather efficient power generation in mild conditions while large waves force contact with both flywheels, increasing resistance and power generation. All told, it is a generator that is adaptable in a way that current wave generators are not and it is this that gives it promise. You can read more in The Economist article that I wrote on this here.