Wave Power, Wave Energy

By: EconomyWatch   Date: 30 April 2010

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Wave Energy Projects, Research & Development Worldwide

Harnessing the energy of ocean surface waves or wave power provides us a clean, inexhaustible and abundant resource that can be transformed into electricity, used for desalination and form part of the solution to the growing amounts of pollutants in the atmosphere.

Wave energy is a relatively new field of research and technology development, especially compared to wind power. But experts agree that the potential of wave power is immense and can wean us off our dependence on fossil fuels.

The world’s first commercial wave farm, the Aguçadora Wave Park, has been constructed five kilometers off Portugal’s north coast, near Póvoa de Varzim. This wave farm uses three Pelamis P-750 wave power generation machines and currently has the capacity to generate 2.25 MW of electricity. Scotland’s Ocean Power Delivery intends to invest in another 28 such generation units to bring up the capacity to 72.5 MW.

The largest tidal plant in the world is situated in La Rance, France, and is a 240 MW project. This project will, however, be outstripped when the 254 MW project in Sihwa, South Korea comes online in 2009. There are also plans of building an 812 MW project in Incheon.

The EU intends to generate 22% of the electricity needs of its member nations from renewable sources by 2010, as compared to only 6% at present. The UK plans to produce 10% of all its electricity from renewable means, especially wave power by 2010, up from the current 2%.

According to the World Energy Council, wave power can lead to 2,000 GW of energy being generated globally, which is approximately an eighth of the current energy consumption across the world. But before wave power becomes a viable energy source, some of the challenges related to using this resource have to be overcome, such as:

  • No two waves are identical and wave motion differs through the day.
  • Wave power may be a high force energy source, but its speed is low, which is unsuitable to the current turbine technology. Current technology requires higher speeds and a constant, steady flow.
  • There is a need to build prototype devices that can not only withstand the forces of the sea, such as storms, hurricanes and saltwater damage, but are built of materials that make electricity generation more affordable.
  • Currently, the cost of running any wave power project is huge, right from the installation of devices to maintenance and constant need for repair. This means that the cost of the electricity generated is too high.


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