A New Time Domain Analysis of the Wave Power
The present frequency domain method of calculating wave power may not be accurate enough for calculating the incident wave power of a specific site, which is primary measurement for evaluating the efficiency of wave energy converters (WECs) and an alternative measure, the time domain method, is proposed. Three sites including two nearshore sites and one deepwater site at Chengshantou sea area were selected, and a sample wave parameters data set was obtained from wave model SWASH to demonstrate the application of these two methods. A comparison of the results of each method was also performed and two influential parameters used in calculation were analyzed. The results show that frequency domain method is very likely to overestimate the wave power at both deepwater and nearshore site. The time domain method proposed in this paper is believed to be more superior in calculating the incident wave power during a short term.