Patent ID: 7886680

Claim:
An array of buoyant wave energy converters (WECs), said array comprising six buoyant WECs, each one of said WECs including a heaving buoy floating on the surface of a body of water having a moving member responsive to the waves for generating useful energy, said WECs serving as mutual mooring points for one another, said WECs being disposed one each at a corner of a hexagonal pattern and interconnected to one another by mooring lines extending along sides of the hexagon, said side extending lines providing two, 120° spaced apart mooring lines for each WEC, and a third mooring line spaced 120° from each of the other said mooring lines connected between each WEC and an auxiliary buoy, each auxiliary buoy being connected in turn to a respective anchor by a descending anchoring line, with all the WECs of the array being similarly interconnected, the auxiliary buoys preventing the mooring lines from weighing down the WECs, wherein the direction of the array of WECs is aligned based upon the prevailing wind-wave direction, and wherein the WECs are positioned such that the distance between adjacent pairs of WECs is substantially equal to one third of the typical wave length such that different pairs of WECs will produce different amounts of power at any instant.