In this work we present the mathematical model and simulations of a particular wave energy converter, the so-called oscillating water column. In this device, waves governed by the one-dimensional nonlinear shallow water equations arrive from offshore, encounter a step in the bottom and then arrive into a chamber to change the volume of the air to activate the turbine. The system is reformulated as two transmission problems: one is related to the wave motion over the stepped topography and the other one is related to the wave-structure interaction at the entrance of the chamber. We finally use Riemann invariants to discretize the transmission conditions and the Lax-Friedrichs scheme to get numerical solutions.