PNNL

Abstract

For remote coastal communities who could be early adopters of wave energy projects, concerns over costs, conflicts, and potential risks of development remain. Designers and developers of these projects and technologies are challenged to address those community concerns as they continue to develop wave energy technologies. One potential means of reducing cost, conflicts, and risks, especially for demonstration and pilot scale projects, could be planning a deployment that operates for only a portion of the year: a seasonal deployment. In this paper we look at the impacts of a season deployment in terms of cost, electricity production, operations and maintenance, environmental impacts, and community benefits. We estimate electricity production using a WEC optimized for the given sea conditions. We determine that, for remote community sized projects, seasonal deployments could result in small cost savings (around 10%), but the decrease in annual energy production is much larger (around 30%). Seasonal deployments could be preferable in places with seasonal energy needs, if failures and device access become a major hindrance to wave energy technology development, or as a cautionary approach to introducing new technology to the oceans. We also determine that a highly seasonal wave resource is not necessarily a requirement in order for seasonal deployments to be considered. Seasonal deployments are an alternative to year-round deployments that are likely to be discussed in places where marine spatial conflict is a major seasonal concern. This work is an exploration of whether such an approach could be feasible.