IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/energy/v4y1979i5p823-831.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Waves, currents, tides—problems and prospects

Author

Listed:
  • Voss, Alfred

Abstract

A quantitative estimation of the energy potential of ocean surface waves, ocean currents and tides and a review of the techniques for utilizing these renewable energy sources, their present state of development and their economic and environmental aspects are presented. The potential of wave power, which is in the order of 1–10 TW, could become a significant source of energy in regions of the world with favorable wave conditions, such as the United Kingdom and Japan. All wave-power schemes investigated today are in an early stage of development, and require more research to become commercially available. The prospects for utilizing ocean currents are relatively unattractive due to the small resource base and the possible environmental effects. Although tidal mills have been used since the eleventh century, today only one sizable tidal power plant has been built, the 240 MWe Rance Tidal Power Station in France. The overall potential of tidal energy is about 3 TW, but only in certain locations of the world do the natural conditions promise technical and economic viability.

Suggested Citation

  • Voss, Alfred, 1979. "Waves, currents, tides—problems and prospects," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 4(5), pages 823-831.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:4:y:1979:i:5:p:823-831
    DOI: 10.1016/0360-5442(79)90014-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0360544279900148
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/0360-5442(79)90014-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ramos, V. & Carballo, R. & Álvarez, M. & Sánchez, M. & Iglesias, G., 2014. "A port towards energy self-sufficiency using tidal stream power," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 432-444.
    2. Ramos, V. & Carballo, R. & Álvarez, M. & Sánchez, M. & Iglesias, G., 2013. "Assessment of the impacts of tidal stream energy through high-resolution numerical modeling," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 541-554.
    3. Fanning, Tim & Jones, Calvin & Munday, Max, 2014. "The regional employment returns from wave and tidal energy: A Welsh analysis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 958-966.
    4. Iglesias, I. & Bio, A. & Bastos, L. & Avilez-Valente, P., 2021. "Estuarine hydrodynamic patterns and hydrokinetic energy production: The Douro estuary case study," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    5. Defne, Zafer & Haas, Kevin A. & Fritz, Hermann M., 2009. "Wave power potential along the Atlantic coast of the southeastern USA," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 34(10), pages 2197-2205.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:4:y:1979:i:5:p:823-831. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.