Generating electrical power from ocean resources

Bahaj, A. S. (2012) Generating electrical power from ocean resources. In, Ocean Energy. Elsevier Ltd., pp. 1-6. (doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-087872-0.00807-6).

Record type: Book Section

Abstract

Ocean energy resources derived from wind, waves, tidal or marine currents can be utilized and converted to large scale sustainable electrical power. Conversion technologies are easily adaptable and can be integrated within the current utility infrastructure. However, ocean energy has many forms - tides, surface waves, ocean circulation, salinity, and thermal gradients. The focus of this chapter is dedicated to two of these, namely waves and tidal energy. The first are the result of wind-driven waves derived ultimately from solar energy and the latter represents those found in tidal or marine currents, driven by gravitational effects. This chapter also gives an analysis of the current state of art of generating electricity from wave and tidal currents (termed ocean energy). Section 8.01.1 provides an overview of ocean wave and marine current energy conversion with more emphasis on the latter; Sections 8.01.2, 8.01.3, 8.01.4, and 8.01.5 address respectively the history of wave energy, wave resource assessment, wave device development, and air turbines; and Section 8.01.6 gives a review of the economics of ocean energy as applied to wave and tidal energy conversion technologies.

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Published date: 10 May 2012

Additional Information: Funding Information: This work is part of the research themes on ocean energy conducted by the Sustainable Energy Research Group within the Faculty of Engineering and the Environment at the University of Southampton. Funding for ocean energy research is from various sources including the UK’s Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC), the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), the European Union (EU), and industry. Full details of the group’s program can be found at www.energy.soton.ac.uk . Funding Information: What will underpin the expansion of commercial activities in wave and marine current energy conversion will be the deployment and installation at array or farm scale. Currently, there are no such farms or arrays of multiple devices deployed and operating in the sea. However, a notable exception has been the installation in northern Portugal in 2008 of a set of three Pelamis P1 wave energy devices representing the world’s first grid-connected wave farm having a capacity of 2.25 MW ( Figure 2 ). This Aguçadoura wave energy project was supported by a generous feed-in tariff of approximately €0.23 kWh −1 , but was unfortunately abandoned for various reasons attributed mainly to the financial collapse of one of the partners in the project [18, 19] . Nevertheless, the technology developer Pelamis Wave Power Ltd [20] is currently progressing with the testing of their P2 converter at EMEC, and plans for larger projects of farms within the United Kingdom are underway [12, 20] . Copyright: Copyright 2016 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

Keywords: Hydrokinetic power generators, Marine current turbines, Marine currents, Ocean energy, Renewable energy, Tidal energy, Tidal stream, Wave energy, Wave energy converters