Waveplam

A Cautiously Optimistic Review of the Technical Status of Wave Energy Technology.

The purpose of this review is to provide technical information that should assist policy makers, investors, project developers and other interested stakeholders to make informed decisions regarding the scheduling of wave power into future energy plans and portfolios. Many estimates have already been declared in a variety of prediction documents but they are usually based on energy market forces rather than technology readiness assessment (TRA) of the devices.

It is widely accepted that wave power has the potential to become a significant contributor to the world’s (clean) energy supply needs, as shown by the differing forecasts listed in Table 1. However, it is also the case that in the 1980s WE was expected to be commercial within 5-7 years. This same lead time was further endorsed in 2000 when a new generation of devices were under development. These ambitious time frames have lead to the contradictory perceptions that either the industry is more advanced than it actually is, or it is not really progressing. The true situation is somewhere in-between, so the following device based report should enable more appropriate introduction dates to be specified. Once established it ought to be only the time targets, not the power targets, that may be difficult to achieve.

It is further hoped that the TRA approach will assist in focusing future product funding programmes since the correct support mechanisms are essential if even modified delivery dates are to be met. The device development recommended requirements are summarised in Table 4.1. The actual details of current and required future fiscal policies to stimulate and accelerate project progress are covered in separate Waveplam studies. Here only the on-going principal European and national research projects are described.

To help achieve the objectives, particularly funding packages, a structured device development programme is proposed and this is used as the foundation for setting the machine evolution status. The technical information is presented in the Appendix as developer based specification sheets. This approach will enable the information to be easily updated and expanded as required.

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Identification and mitigation of non-technological barriers

Despite the remaining technical challenges for harnessing the energy of ocean waves, a major concern of product and project developers, as well as the international RTD community, is the existence of obstacles not directly originating in the technology. Although it is impossible to give a concise and generally valid description of such issues over a large geographical area, an attempt to present in a concise way the most common barriers, their severity and their logical relationships has been concluded within the WAVEPLAM project, in order to:

(i) Rise awareness in the target groups of the project (in particular authorities and decision makers), and
(ii) Prepare a baseline for tackling these barriers on which levels necessary.

The term “non- technological” or “non-technical” barrier was established in the context of the difficulties for the market penetration of renewable energy technologies in general, thus being a rather recent issue. Mainly with respect to photovoltaics and wind energy, but also regarding biofuel and to some extent also ocean energy, a number of teams world-wide have identified and collated such barriers, mostly with some strong regional focus.

Within this work the identified barriers were grouped regarding their origin, effects and potential mitigation mechanisms, together with a tentative assessment of their grade of severity for wave energy implementation. The grouping does not necessarily correspond exactly to other attempts of structuring non-technical barriers, however in principle it is in agreement with most often cited barriers.
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