The European EVOLVE project has identified 70 GW of practically viable ocean energy in Great Britain, Ireland and Portugal, split between 60 GW of wave energy and 10 GW of tidal stream energy.
Across the three locations the study was focused on, 34.8 GW of practical deployment capacity was found in Great Britain, 18.8 GW in Ireland and 15.5 GW in Portugal.
The two-year research estimates that 10 GW of ocean energy deployed in Great Britain could reduce system dispatch costs by GBP 1.46 billion (USD 1.81bn/EUR 1.66bn) per year and carbon dioxide emissions by up to 1.05 million tonnes.
“The key headline from the EVOLVE Project is that including a higher proportion of ocean energy within our future electricity system consistently results in higher renewable dispatch, for the same total renewable energy availability, due to the offsetting of wave and tidal with wind and solar generation,” said Shona Pennock of Edinburgh University, who is EVOLVE’s technical manager. Dispatching more renewables leads to lower fossil fuel and peaking plant dispatch, Pennock added.
The project was led by Aquatera in partnership with WavEC Offshore Renewables, Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE), and the University of Edinburgh, as well as Swedish wave energy converter developer CorPower Ocean and Scottish tidal stream turbine developer Orbital Marine Power. It involved both spatial and temporal analyses. In addition, microgrid modeling of future island systems was also carried out.
According to the research, a combination of ocean and wind energy brings benefits as wave energy generation increases when wind energy dips and tidal stream generation is unconnected to wind.
“The net zero energy system of the future will need multiple forms of renewable energy generation. We know that the tides rise and fall like clockwork and can be predicated hundreds of years into the future,” commented Orbital Marine Power commercial director Oliver Wragg.
(GBP 1 = USD 1.236/EUR 1.138)
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