SINCE the oil crisis of the 1970s kick-started interest in wave power, it has become received wisdom that only offshore waves are worth tapping into. As a result, the varied designs competing to rule the waves have been banished to distant, deep waters where conditions are rougher and engineering costs highest.
Now a reassessment suggests that waves closer to shore are not such puny prospects after all, raising the hope that harvesting energy from waves will become easier and more economical than previously imagined.
Statisticians took to the seas in the 1970s. They used data from weather ships and buoys and calculated that the waves passing a 1-metre-wide slice of water at a 50-metre-deep 鈥渙ffshore鈥� location carry an average power of 40 kilowatts, double the power density of waves in 10-metre-deep waters nearer the shore.
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Ever since, the wave-power industry has focused its attention 2 to 10 kilometres offshore in the belief that the greater energy yield would offset the higher price of maintenance and of relaying the power back to land.
Now at Queen鈥檚 University Belfast, UK, says wave power can be brought closer to home. He calculated how much energy could realistically be extracted from waves using contemporary computer models of the world鈥檚 oceans. He found that nearshore waves 0.5 to 2 kilometres from the coast carry 80 to 90 per cent of the usable energy of waves further out. Folley reckons offshore waves carry exploitable power at a density of about 18.5 kilowatts per metre-slice, compared with about 16.5 kW for nearshore ones.
鈥淣earshore waves carry 80 to 90 per cent of the usable energy found in offshore ones鈥�
The standard figures overestimated the utility of offshore waves for two reasons, he says. They allowed severe storms to push up the average power figures, although wave-power devices generate little power in such storms because they would often have to switch into a self-preservation mode.
They also assumed that offshore waves have a prevailing direction, just as nearshore waves tend to move towards the coast. It is now understood that the latter is due to the shallowing sea floor refracting waves, says Folley 鈥� an effect not at work offshore. Instead, offshore waves come from all directions, meaning that some harvesters in an offshore wave farm would be blocked by others. Nearshore farms could be strung out in lines to avoid that.
The figures are convincing, says at the University of Edinburgh, UK. 鈥淏ut many developers are now committed to deeper water and are unlikely to change their approach, given their investment,鈥� he says.
Few designs can simply be towed closer to shore, Folley notes, because offshore waves are best exploited by bobbing up and down, while nearshore ones have most energy in their back-and-forth movements. Some types of energy harvester are ready for shallow waters right now, he says, such as the , developed by Edinburgh-based Aquamarine Power, and the from Finnish firm AW-Energy.
