ANALYSIS OF COST REDUCTION OPPORTUNITIES IN THE WAVE ENERGY INDUSTRY
Wave energy has been developing for a long time and has made significant progress in recent years. However, despite the effort that has been made for the commercialisation of this energy, the challenges that still need to be overcome have made it impossible to compete with the rest of renewable technologies.
There are different barriers that generation of wave energy has yet to pass, but one of the biggest ones is its costs. The predicted cost of energy from these technologies is relatively high compared to other renewables, but significant cost reduction potential is expected in the long term.
Therefore, the main aim of this project is to analyse the economic and technical challenges as well as the opportunities to make wave energy more competitive. These future cost reductions will allow a transformation to a more viable wave energy industry.
In order to develop an analysis of the possible cost reduction opportunities, the project is firstly focused on the detection of the most significant cost estimation figures. Once the ones with greater scope for cost reduction are determined, an evaluation and a literature review is carried out. This review will allow us to study which are the most feasible opportunities and alternatives to decrease the costs of the different systems of a wave energy project.
However, the capital costs and operation and maintenance costs are not the only variables with significant influence on the viability of wave energy. The wave resource of a selected site and the device's performance are also two important figures that affect the profitability of wave energy.
Due to the lack of information and the unconfirmed values given of the energy generation of different wave energy convertors (WEC's), an analysis of the performance matrix of two devices is done by calculating their power curves. By doing this, we will be able to determine which are the optimal sites for each device and therefore, evaluate the influence of the site in the costs. All these variables are taken into account in the levelised cost of the energy (LCOE). Therefore, the LCOE of two different WEC's in four different sites is calculated, and a sensitivity analysis of the LCOE is carried out in order to see how the variables interact, searching for competitiveness.
There are different barriers that generation of wave energy has yet to pass, but one of the biggest ones is its costs. The predicted cost of energy from these technologies is relatively high compared to other renewables, but significant cost reduction potential is expected in the long term.
Therefore, the main aim of this project is to analyse the economic and technical challenges as well as the opportunities to make wave energy more competitive. These future cost reductions will allow a transformation to a more viable wave energy industry.
In order to develop an analysis of the possible cost reduction opportunities, the project is firstly focused on the detection of the most significant cost estimation figures. Once the ones with greater scope for cost reduction are determined, an evaluation and a literature review is carried out. This review will allow us to study which are the most feasible opportunities and alternatives to decrease the costs of the different systems of a wave energy project.
However, the capital costs and operation and maintenance costs are not the only variables with significant influence on the viability of wave energy. The wave resource of a selected site and the device's performance are also two important figures that affect the profitability of wave energy.
Due to the lack of information and the unconfirmed values given of the energy generation of different wave energy convertors (WEC's), an analysis of the performance matrix of two devices is done by calculating their power curves. By doing this, we will be able to determine which are the optimal sites for each device and therefore, evaluate the influence of the site in the costs. All these variables are taken into account in the levelised cost of the energy (LCOE). Therefore, the LCOE of two different WEC's in four different sites is calculated, and a sensitivity analysis of the LCOE is carried out in order to see how the variables interact, searching for competitiveness.
