The Wave Energy Resource

Authors: Stephen Barstow Gunnar Mørk Denis Mollison João Cruz

Publish Date: 2008

Volume: , Issue: , Pages: 93-132

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Abstract

On an average day about 1TWh of wave energy enters the coastal waters of the British Isles It is tempting to call this amount huge it is about the same as the total energy of the terrible Indian Ocean tsunami of the 26th of December 2004 It brings home the scale of human energy demands to realise that this is also about the same amount of energy as is used in electricity in the British Isles on an average day The same approximate equivalence holds at a world scale the total wave energy resource is of the same order of magnitude as world electricity consumption ~ 2TW The exploitable limit is probably at most about 1025 of the resource thus ocean wave energy is potentially a significant contributor to human energy demands not a panacea Its key advantages are that it comes in a high quality form mechanical energy of oscillation and that it travels very long distances with little loss so that small inputs over a large ocean can accumulate and be harvested at or near the ocean’s edge Other advantages include the point absorber effect whereby devices can extract energy from a fraction of a wavelength on either side this makes small devices with capacities of the order of 1MW relatively attractive

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