Advances in the development of dielectric elastomer generators for wave energy conversion

This paper presents a summary of recent progress towards the development and upscaling of an emerging class of electrostatic power take-off (PTO) systems for wave energy converters (WECs), called dielectric elastomer generators (DEGs). DEGs are electromechanical devices able to convert mechanical energy into electrical energy by exploiting the deformation of rubber-like dielectric materials. The high power density (in the order of hundreds of Watts per kilogram), good efficiency and ease of assembling, combined with the low-cost of the employed materials (a few euros per kilogram) and their intrinsic resilient/reliable response to mechanical shocks make DEGs a very promising option for the deployment of a future generation of WECs. In the last decade, some specific concepts of WECs based on DEGs have been devised and a considerable interest in the topic has been aroused in the wave energy community. Among the candidate DEG topologies for wave energy harvesting, recent studies have sugg...