Waves – the largest untapped energy source in the world

The global theoretical potential of wave power has been calculated at 29,500 TWh/year, ten times the current total electricity consumption of the European Union. With such an enormous global resource, wave power has the potential to be an important part of the future energy mix.

Wind and solar power have expanded rapidly on land but are facing challenges with lack of available space, negative visual impact and noise pollution. Wind power is expanding rapidly also offshore but at higher cost.

There is furthermore an increasing problem with grid stability, resulting from the increasing share of wind and solar power. This pushes the need for large amounts of energy storage to make sure power is available when needed, adding to the cost of electricity. The energy in ocean waves is accumulated from wind blowing across the water surface over large distances. The energy content of waves is therefore not only more concentrated but also changes more slowly and with less variation, compared to the energy content of the wind. Wave power can therefore provide more predictable production with less variation resulting in less need for energy storage.

Target markets are utility scale wave farms connected to onshore grids, 
off-grid power supply to Island communities, oil & gas platforms, aqua culture and green hydrogen and ammonia production. Attractive locations for InfinityWEC wave farm installations are ocean areas characterized by 80 – 200 meters depth and wave resources > 25 kW/m, such areas indicated on map below. Most of the west coast of Europe has deep water close to shore and very good wave resources in the range of 40 – 60 kW/m, and >60 kW/m outside British Isles.

Challenges to overcome

The specific challenges with wave power is that waves have slow, very powerful, oscillating motions with high and random variation of size and energy content from wave to wave. Wave energy converters must operate reliably in the harsh marine environment, capture energy efficiently over a wide range of wave conditions, while being resilient to the most extreme conditions, and doing so cost efficiently.

The complexity of this challenge has resulted in an internationally accepted staged development pathway, a framework for maturing ocean energy devices from concepts, over prototype testing in scale and full-size, to commercial deployment. In each stage the solution is ensured to be viable from all perspective and most importantly in terms of levelized cost of energy.

Read more about how we overcome these challenges here