The thesis "Technical and non-technical issues towards the commercialisation of wave energy converters" elaborates on the necessary steps and on the different difficulties that appear during the development of a wave energy converter (WEC). It focuses on seven key areas which appear when a WEC is going through sea trials. As examined throughout the thesis, all these subjects are of relevance to successfully reach the commercialisation of WECs and need attention from the sector as such, not least from device developers. The thesis is presented in two parts: a main introduction and a collection of papers. The first part provides a brief history of wave energy, introduces the research topic, describes the different disciplines addressed in the thesis and relates them. The eight papers comprise the core part of the work. The papers address the research topic in different ways: from a legal, social, technical and economic viewpoint, and from various WEC development stages. All the analyses are carried out from the perspective of device developers. xi Acknowledgments I would like to gratefully acknowledge the invaluable help from the following people and research groups throughout these years of knowledge, experiences and learning. To Spok ApS, especially to Hans and to Lise, for trusting me, for their warm welcome in Denmark, for their help and for their continuous support; my most sincere thank you to Hans for his commitment, his fruitful comments and advices, his mentorship and his diligent guide during these years. To the Wave Energy Research Group at Aalborg University for providing the opportunity of teaching and sharing my enthusiasm for wave energy with a wide variety of students, for their approach of learning by experience and for having an open-used wave tank. I would like to personally thank Jens Peter for his wise observations, constructive discussions, guidance and support in the PhD; and John for his helpful corrections and precious time. To the Wave Dragon team, particularly to Erik, for his moral of company openness and sincerity, for sharing his priceless knowledge, for his valuable remarks, for his guidance throughout the wave energy world, and for making the dark Danish winters a bit brighter and colourful. My thankful acknowledge to Energinet.dk and PSO project 10791, and to Niels Ejner for his continuous support and collaboration.
Wave energy is one of the most promising renewable energies available with its very large resource. The waves generated by the wind field are steadier than the wind field itself, rendering wave energy more consistent than wind energy. It is also more predictable than wind and solar. Wave energy is making continuous progress towards commercialisation, and thanks to an increasing number of deployments at sea, the sector is increasing the understanding of the costs and economies of these projects. No wave energy converter has been demonstrated to be commercially viable, and it is yet to be proven that wave energy can contribute to the renewable energy mix. In this context, and in order to find an economically viable solution for exploiting wave energy, it is important to assess the economic potential of a particular concept throughout the entire technological development process. At early development stages, this assessment can be challenging and present large uncertainties. Notwithstanding, it is important to perform the economic assessment already at the early stages in order to identify possible bottlenecks or potential improvements or modifications of a concept. This work presents guidance for the economic evaluation of a wave energy concept at an early development stage by setting up the economic frame based on a target LCoE. It involves the understanding of the entry cost to be achieved for a specific target market and evaluating the breakdown of costs based on a detailed technology agnostic database of costs. The guidance is then applied to a new type of wave energy converter, in which the primary coupling with the waves is through hydrodynamic lift forces.
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