A New Four-Year Project Will Test The Viability of Large-Scale Wave Energy In Europe

Orkney is an archipelago located in waters north of the Scottish mainland. EMEC, which is based there, has become a major hub for the development of wave and tidal power since its inception in 2003.

In another statement, OceanEnergy said a third phase of the project would look at commercialization, among other things. An overarching goal of the project is to “create a technology deployment pathway for a 20 MW pilot farm,” according to EMEC.

“The innovative actions taken in this programme aim to improve the efficiency, reliability, scalability and sustainability of wave energy technology, and reduce the LCOE of the technology by over 30%,” Myles Heward, who is project manager at EMEC, said. “This will help to de-risk investments in wave energy.”

LCOE refers to levelized cost of energy, a term the U.S. database Tethys defines as being “the measure of a device’s lifetime costs divided by energy production.”

Tony Lewis, OceanEnergy’s chief technical officer, was bullish about the prospects for WEDUSEA.

He said the project would “demonstrate that wave technology is on a cost reduction trajectory and will thus be a stepping stone to larger commercial array scale up and further industrialisation.”

“We predict that the natural energy of the world’s oceans will one day supply much of the grid,” Lewis added.