Marine Energy
Renewable energies aim at diversifying sources of clean electricity and offering an optimized energy mix to any part of the world while having a minimal impact on the environment. While solar and wind already represent a considerable share of the world electricity generation, marine energies are at an earlier stage of development.
It exists a wide diversity of potential in marine energy devices, such as Wave Energy Converters (WECs). Many companies have gone through design concepts and prototypes development processes, but so far, no products have proven commercial viability. Engineering challenges, such as efficiently harvesting energy from waves and surviving extreme loads during storms, are one of the major barriers to the world deployment of these technologies. Nevertheless, ocean technologies are one of the most promising untapped energy resources and recent improvements in the design can represent a huge step towards the adoption of WECs.
WaveBoost
To instigate an improvement to reliability and survivability of WECs, WaveBoost, a three-year Horizon 2020 funded project, has drawn to a close with a step-change improvement achieved to the reliability and performance of wave energy technology.
Led by CorPower Ocean, the WaveBoost consortium designed and developed an advanced Power Take Off (PTO) system allowing wave energy converters (WECs) to operate safer and more reliably in harsh ocean conditions while increasing annual electricity production.
The system incorporates fewer components, thus reducing complexity and CAPEX while improving reliability, compared to previous designs. Besides, an energy redistribution system was also developed to manage fluctuating power input from ocean waves in order to support grid integration and increase energy production. The improvements enable to reduce the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE).
The project was concluded in 2019 and a summary of the achievements is available.
The WaveBoost project consortium comprised of sector leaders from Sweden, Portugal and the UK including CorPower Ocean, EDP Inovação, WavEC Offshore Renewables, The University of Edinburgh, Arcos Hydraulik, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, and the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC).
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