Sea Wave Energy. A Review of the Current Technologies and Perspectives

Abstract

The proposal of new technologies capable of producing electrical energy from renewable sources has driven research into seas and oceans. Research finds this field very promising in the future of renewable energies, especially in areas where there are specific climatic and morphological characteristics to exploit large amounts of energy from the sea. In general, this kind of energy is referred to as six energy resources: waves, tidal range, tidal current, ocean current, ocean thermal energy conversion, and saline gradient. This review has the aim to list several wave-energy converter power plants and to analyze their years of operation. In this way, a focus is created to understand how many wave-energy converter plants work on average and whether it is indeed an established technology.

Review of the Influence of Oceanographic and Geometric Parameters on Oscillating Water Columns

“…In 2019, a similar concept was developed on King Island, Australia (200 kW) [25].  The Pico plant in Azores, Portugal (400 kW) (Figure 6) has been operating since 1999 with Wells turbines built on the sea bottom next to a vertical cliff [11,21].…”

“…In 2019, a similar concept was developed on King Island, Australia (200 kW) [25]. In Guangdong Province (China) another shoreline OWC plant (100 kW) was built in 2001 [11].…”

“…Some examples are the OWCs installed at the Sakata port (Japan) and in Mutriku (Spain) (Figure 9). In 2019, a similar concept was developed on King Island, Australia (200 kW) [25]. There have been other OWC projects that failed, such as the OSPREY plant (1 MW) that was located on the Scottish coast or the greenWAVE (1 MW) plant built by Oceanlinx in Port Adelaide [11].…”

“…Some years later, other similar systems were developed. Among these, the best known are the sloped buoy, the spar buoy, and the Mighty Whale [25].…”

“…The Mighty Whale (110 kW) was developed in Japan in 1998 [11] (Figure 10). The sloped buoy is composed of three parallel pipes installed on a floating buoy wit a tilt angle of 45° [25].…”