Wave power is the capture of energy of wind waves to do useful work – for example, electricity generation, water desalination, or pumping water. A machine that exploits wave power is a wave energy converter (WEC).
The Mullet Peninsula —also known as the Mullet and sometimes as the Erris Peninsula—is a peninsula in the barony of Erris in County Mayo, Ireland. As of 2016 it has a population of 3963. It consists of a large promontory connected to the mainland at Belmullet, a town of about 1,000 inhabitants, by a narrow isthmus. There are several villages on the Mullet peninsula including Aughleam, Elly, Corclough and Binghamstown. The Peninsula is about 33 km (21 mi) long and ranges from 200 metres (660 ft) to 12 km (7.5 mi) wide. Its northernmost point is Erris Head. The peninsula's doglegged shape forms two bays, Blacksod Bay and Broadhaven Bay.
The Pelamis Wave Energy Converter was a technology that used the motion of ocean surface waves to create electricity. The machine was made up of connected sections which flex and bend as waves pass; it is this motion which is used to generate electricity.
An OE Buoy or Ocean Energy Buoy is a wave power device that uses an Oscillating Water Column design. It was deployed in half-scale test mode in Spiddal near Galway in Ireland for over two years between 2007 and 2009. As of the 5th of March 2011 the model has been redeployed at the same site, primarily as a data collector for the EU funded Cores Project.
CETO is a wave-energy technology that converts kinetic energy from ocean swell into electrical power and directly desalinates freshwater through reverse osmosis. The technology was developed and tested onshore and offshore in Fremantle, Western Australia. In early 2015 a CETO 5 production installation was commissioned and connected to the grid. As of January 2016 all the electricity generated is being purchased to contribute towards the power requirements of HMAS Stirling naval base at Garden Island, Western Australia. Some of the energy will also be used directly to desalinate water.
The European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) Ltd is a UKAS accredited test and research center focusing on wave and tidal power development based in the Orkney Islands, UK. The centre provides developers with the opportunity to test full-scale grid-connected prototype devices in unrivalled wave and tidal conditions.
Wavegen Limited was a wave energy company based in Inverness, Scotland. It was founded in 1990 by Allan Thomson. It was sold to Voith Hydro in 2005, and they closed the company in 2013.
Pelamis Wave Power designed and manufactured the Pelamis Wave Energy Converter – a technology that uses the motion of ocean surface waves to create electricity. The company was established in 1998 and had offices and fabrication facilities in Leith Docks, Edinburgh, Scotland. It went into administration in November 2014.
Narec, since 2014 known as the National Renewable Energy Centre, is a part of the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult, a British technology innovation and research centre for offshore wind power, wave energy, tidal energy and low carbon technologies. ORE Catapult's head office is in Glasgow, Scotland. The centre operates multi-purpose offshore renewable energy test and demonstration facilities. It is similar to other centres, such as NREL in the US and National Centre for Renewable Energies (CENER) in Spain. The National Renewable Energy Centre is based in Blyth, Northumberland.
Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) is a U.S. publicly owned renewable energy company, providing electric power and communications solutions, services and related for remote offshore applications. The company's PowerBuoy wave energy conversion technology is theoretically scalable to hundreds of megawatts and the generated energy from wave power can be supplied to the grid via submarine cables. Several projects were undertaken around the world, but the economic viability of the theoretical concept has been problematic.
The Oyster is a hydro-electric wave energy device that uses the motion of ocean waves to generate electricity. It is made up of a Power Connector Frame (PCF), which is bolted to the seabed, and a Power Capture Unit (PCU). The PCU is a hinged buoyant flap that moves back and forth with movement of the waves. The movement of the flap drives two hydraulic pistons that feed high-pressured water to an onshore hydro-electric turbine, which drives a generator to make electricity. Oyster was stationed at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) at its Billia Croo site in Orkney, Scotland until the company ceased trading in 2015.
Marine energy or marine power refers to the energy carried by ocean waves, tides, salinity, and ocean temperature differences. The movement of water in the world's oceans creates a vast store of kinetic energy, or energy in motion. Some of this energy can be harnessed to generate electricity to power homes, transport and industries.
A tidal farm is a group of multiple tidal stream generators assembled in the same location used for production of electric power, similar to that of a wind farm. The low-voltage powerlines from the individual units are then connected to a substation, where the voltage is stepped up with the use of a transformer for distribution through a high voltage transmission system.
A tidal stream generator, often referred to as a tidal energy converter (TEC), is a machine that extracts energy from moving masses of water, in particular tides, although the term is often used in reference to machines designed to extract energy from run of river or tidal estuarine sites. Certain types of these machines function very much like underwater wind turbines, and are thus often referred to as tidal turbines. They were first conceived in the 1970s during the oil crisis.
The Aegir wave farm was a planned wave farm off the south west of Shetland. The project was developed by Aegir Wave Power, a 2009 formed joint venture of Vattenfall and the wave power technology developer Pelamis Wave Power. The wave farm would have had capacity from 10 MW potentially up to 100 MW. Following the collapse of Pelamis in November 2014, the project was cancelled by Vattenfall in February 2015.
Oscillating water columns (OWCs) are a type of wave energy converter that harness energy from the oscillation of the seawater inside a chamber or hollow caused by the action of waves. OWCs have shown promise as a renewable energy source with low environmental impact. Because of this, multiple companies have been working to design increasingly efficient OWC models. OWC are devices with a semi-submerged chamber or hollow open to the sea below, keeping a trapped air pocket above a water column. Waves force the column to act like a piston, moving up and down, forcing the air out of the chamber and back into it. This continuous movement forces a bidirectional stream of high-velocity air, which is channeled through a power take-off (PTO). The PTO system converts the airflow into energy. In models that convert airflow to electricity, the PTO system consists of a bidirectional turbine. This means that the turbine always spins the same direction regardless of the direction of airflow, allowing for energy to be continuously generated. Both the collecting chamber and PTO systems will be explained further under "Basic OWC Components."
The FloWave TT ocean energy research facility is designed to test physical scale models of marine renewable energy devices, in a combined wave and current environment.
The European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre (EOWDC), also known as the Aberdeen Bay Wind Farm is an offshore wind test and demonstration facility located around 3 kilometres off the east coast of Aberdeenshire, in the North Sea, Scotland. It was developed by the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre consortium. The scheme is relatively small - it consists of 11 wind turbines with an installed capacity of 93.2 megawatts. It is located between Blackdog and Bridge of Don near Aberdeen. First power was generated in July 2018, with full commissioning following in September 2018.
MARMOK-A-5 is an offshore electrical power generator that uses wave energy to create electricity. This device is a spar buoy installed in the maritime testing site Bimep, in the Bay of Biscay. It is the first grid-connected maritime generator in Spain, and one of the first in the world.
