History of Wave Energy
Work on wave energy began in earnest only in the early 1970s as a response to the oil crises. There were several Government sponsored programmes throughout the world, particularly in Japan, Norway and the UK. These programmes advanced the technology considerably and their achievements were impressive but they led to the installation of prototype devices (including one in the UK). The failure of these programmes to deliver economic supplies of electricity left the technology with a credibility problem that has been hard to overcome. Therefore, it is important to understand the reasons for this failure.
The wave power resource around the UK is immense: approximately 120 GW or 2½ times the total electricity demand. Early work on wave energy aimed at exploiting the maximum amount of resource possible. Colossal schemes were required to achieve this target. This entailed large construction costs, prolonged construction times and significant technical challenges. These factors led to high generating costs and large capital costs for the first prototype, which made all the technologies commercially unattractive.
In the 1970's, wave energy was a novel technology. It faced many technical challenges, required the synthesis of many disciplines (e.g. oceanography, fluid mechanics, structural engineering, etc.) and needed the development of completely new fields. At the time, the nearest technology that it could draw on was coastal engineering (e.g. breakwaters and coastal defenses), an area where cost was not of primary importance. In the author's opinion, these early developments faced too many challenges to solve within the overall heading of wave energy.
Most of the early R&D programmes were totally government funded (either in direct grants or through universities or research institutes) and many had a large academic component. At the time, these aspects were appropriate, because wave energy was an emerging technology, which needed the research skills of academia and which could not provide industry with the types of return that it required. However, industry-led development is generally required in order to achieve commerciality.
Since the mid-1990s, there has been a resurgence in wave energy, led mainly by small engineering companies. As a result, there are a number of projects being built (or about to be built) all over the world. These companies have all learned from the lessons taught by the early experiences in wave energy: All the devices are relatively small in size and output (the biggest is 2 MW). This reduces the prototype costs (making funding easier) and the technological challenges. The technological challenges are further reduced for some devices by installing them at the shoreline. The devices started to be constructed in the mid to late 1990's. Consequently, they had the benefit of two decades of experience in constructing and operating offshore oil and gas platforms, with the corresponding scope for technology transfer. Nearly all of the devices are being built by industry (typically small engineering companies), so the focus is on the economics of the technology from the start.
European Policies for Wave Energy