A Proposed Guidance for the Economic Assessment of Wave Energy Converters at Early Development Stages

Abstract

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.

Techno-Economic Assessment of Offshore Wind and Hybrid Wind-Wave Farms with Energy Storage Systems

“…For approximating the costs of the WEC units, an estimation of a generic, utility-scale floating wave energy farm with a 160 MW capacity is selected; its characteristics are summarised in [41].This paper gathers more recent estimations of costs for the wave energy sector while keeping in mind influence factors such as learning curves and economy of scale of future projects [41].…”

A Review of the Levelized Cost of Wave Energy Based on a Techno-Economic Model

“…This kind of cost measure is originally comparable to the net present cost per barrel measure commonly used as a tool in the oil industry [74]. The discount of the energy production at year t is not included in Equation (2) [75]. The annual energy production output may vary within a limited range because of the WECs gradually reaching their peak output due to the efficiency improvement or output loss due to the device's failure.…”

“…There is a big difference in the percentage gap among the DC towards the different counterpart costs. The DC percentage of the CAPEX (or initial cost) ranges from 0.0017% to 10% [75,77,97,98]; the DC can be included into the CAPEX in the calculation [80,99]. When compared with the TC, the DC percentage amounts to 3-6.26% [44,92].…”

An Evaluation of Wave Energy Generation and Cost of Energy in the Black Sea

“…Thus, the price of the unit energy must be evaluated during the design of WECs and necessary changes in the design should be applied to increase the power capture and to reduce the costs. The Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) is commonly considered the primary metric for assessing the economic performance of wave energy converters (Tetu & Chozas, 2021). Capital expenditures (CAPEX), operation and maintenance expenditures (OPEX), and decommissioning costs are the main elements of the total cost of an array of WECs considered in the early stages of design.…”