How Does It Works

The oscillating water column device has a chamber with its one end open to the sea and the other end vented to an air turbine. A propagating wave crest acts as a piston and compresses the air inside the chamber, thus forcing it out through the turbine. When the wave trough is present in the chamber, air is sucked back through the turbine. Hence, a turbine that can rotate in the same direction irrespective of the direction of air flow is necessary to drive a generator in order to generate electricity, on both cycles. Such a turbine is called 'Wells turbine'.

The drawback of this method are that is has low efficiency science it is shoreline device.