IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/renene/v221y2024ics0960148123017792.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An advanced geospatial assessment of the Levelised cost of energy (LCOE) for wave farms in Irish and western UK waters

Author

Listed:
  • O'Connell, Ross
  • Kamidelivand, Mitra
  • Furlong, Rebecca
  • Guerrini, Marco
  • Cullinane, Margaret
  • Murphy, Jimmy

Abstract

With the climate crisis becoming an ever-growing concern, Europe is striving to reduce its energy related greenhouse gas emissions. On the western edge of this continent, wave energy is a logical future clean energy consideration for Ireland and the U.K. to help realise ambitious targets recently being set in policy. Yet to reach commercialisation, there is still much uncertainty surrounding the financial feasibility of wave farms in the region of interest, and where exactly the most feasible locations are likely to be. The Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) is the most commonly used metric in determining the financial feasibility of an energy project, and it is very much site dependant when it comes to wave energy, varying considerably from one location to the next. This study uses the geographic approach to address this and estimate the LCOE of wave energy farms in the region, considering different technology types and the geospatially variable inputs at play. The results reveal areas of high project feasibility in the Atlantic Ocean (off the west coast of Ireland), the Celtic Sea and the Inner Seas off the West Coast of Scotland (ISWCS), with LCOE values below 110€/MWh along the coasts of these areas.

Suggested Citation

  • O'Connell, Ross & Kamidelivand, Mitra & Furlong, Rebecca & Guerrini, Marco & Cullinane, Margaret & Murphy, Jimmy, 2024. "An advanced geospatial assessment of the Levelised cost of energy (LCOE) for wave farms in Irish and western UK waters," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 221(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:221:y:2024:i:c:s0960148123017792
    DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2023.119864
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148123017792
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.renene.2023.119864?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.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Amélie Têtu & Julia Fernandez Chozas, 2021. "A Proposed Guidance for the Economic Assessment of Wave Energy Converters at Early Development Stages," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-14, August.
    2. Johnston, Barry & Foley, Aoife & Doran, John & Littler, Timothy, 2020. "Levelised cost of energy, A challenge for offshore wind," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 876-885.
    3. Kluger, Jocelyn M. & Haji, Maha N. & Slocum, Alexander H., 2023. "The power balancing benefits of wave energy converters in offshore wind-wave farms with energy storage," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 331(C).
    4. Veigas, M. & López, M. & Iglesias, G., 2014. "Assessing the optimal location for a shoreline wave energy converter," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 404-411.
    5. Américo S. Ribeiro & Maite deCastro & Liliana Rusu & Mariana Bernardino & João M. Dias & Moncho Gomez-Gesteira, 2020. "Evaluating the Future Efficiency of Wave Energy Converters along the NW Coast of the Iberian Peninsula," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(14), pages 1-15, July.
    6. Castro-Santos, Laura & Filgueira-Vizoso, Almudena & Carral-Couce, Luis & Formoso, José Ángel Fraguela, 2016. "Economic feasibility of floating offshore wind farms," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 868-882.
    7. Laura Castro-Santos & Dina Silva & A. Rute Bento & Nadia Salvação & C. Guedes Soares, 2018. "Economic Feasibility of Wave Energy Farms in Portugal," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-16, November.
    8. Alain Ulazia & Markel Penalba & Arkaitz Rabanal & Gabriel Ibarra-Berastegi & John Ringwood & Jon Sáenz, 2018. "Historical Evolution of the Wave Resource and Energy Production off the Chilean Coast over the 20th Century," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-23, August.
    9. Penalba, Markel & Ulazia, Alain & Ibarra-Berastegui, Gabriel & Ringwood, John & Sáenz, Jon, 2018. "Wave energy resource variation off the west coast of Ireland and its impact on realistic wave energy converters’ power absorption," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 224(C), pages 205-219.
    10. O'Connor, M. & Lewis, T. & Dalton, G., 2013. "Techno-economic performance of the Pelamis P1 and Wavestar at different ratings and various locations in Europe," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 889-900.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Sánchez, Alfredo & Mendoza, Edgar, 2024. "Wave energy converter farm feasibility assessment in southwest Baja California, Mexico," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 227(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sun, Peidong & Xu, Bin & Wang, Jichao, 2022. "Long-term trend analysis and wave energy assessment based on ERA5 wave reanalysis along the Chinese coastline," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 324(C).
    2. Laura Castro-Santos & Dina Silva & A. Rute Bento & Nadia Salvação & C. Guedes Soares, 2018. "Economic Feasibility of Wave Energy Farms in Portugal," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-16, November.
    3. Yi Zhang & Dapeng Zhang & Haoyu Jiang, 2023. "A Review of Offshore Wind and Wave Installations in Some Areas with an Eye towards Generating Economic Benefits and Offering Commercial Inspiration," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(10), pages 1-32, May.
    4. Arkaitz Rabanal & Alain Ulazia & Gabriel Ibarra-Berastegi & Jon Sáenz & Unai Elosegui, 2018. "MIDAS: A Benchmarking Multi-Criteria Method for the Identification of Defective Anemometers in Wind Farms," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-19, December.
    5. Chenglong Guo & Wanan Sheng & Dakshina G. De Silva & George Aggidis, 2023. "A Review of the Levelized Cost of Wave Energy Based on a Techno-Economic Model," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(5), pages 1-30, February.
    6. Américo S. Ribeiro & Maite deCastro & Liliana Rusu & Mariana Bernardino & João M. Dias & Moncho Gomez-Gesteira, 2020. "Evaluating the Future Efficiency of Wave Energy Converters along the NW Coast of the Iberian Peninsula," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(14), pages 1-15, July.
    7. Oscar Garcia & Alain Ulazia & Mario del Rio & Sheila Carreno-Madinabeitia & Andoni Gonzalez-Arceo, 2019. "An Energy Potential Estimation Methodology and Novel Prototype Design for Building-Integrated Wind Turbines," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(10), pages 1-21, May.
    8. Choupin, O. & Têtu, A. & Del Río-Gamero, B. & Ferri, F. & Kofoed, JP., 2022. "Premises for an annual energy production and capacity factor improvement towards a few optimised wave energy converters configurations and resources pairs," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 312(C).
    9. Tunde Aderinto & Hua Li, 2018. "Ocean Wave Energy Converters: Status and Challenges," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-26, May.
    10. Foteinis, Spyros, 2022. "Wave energy converters in low energy seas: Current state and opportunities," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    11. Ulazia, Alain & Esnaola, Ganix & Serras, Paula & Penalba, Markel, 2020. "On the impact of long-term wave trends on the geometry optimisation of oscillating water column wave energy converters," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    12. Ulazia, Alain & Penalba, Markel & Ibarra-Berastegui, Gabriel & Ringwood, John & Sáenz, Jon, 2019. "Reduction of the capture width of wave energy converters due to long-term seasonal wave energy trends," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 1-1.
    13. Coe, Ryan G. & Ahn, Seongho & Neary, Vincent S. & Kobos, Peter H. & Bacelli, Giorgio, 2021. "Maybe less is more: Considering capacity factor, saturation, variability, and filtering effects of wave energy devices," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 291(C).
    14. Penalba, Markel & Ulazia, Alain & Saénz, Jon & Ringwood, John V., 2020. "Impact of long-term resource variations on wave energy Farms: The Icelandic case," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    15. Ulazia, Alain & Saenz-Aguirre, Aitor & Ibarra-Berastegui, Gabriel & Sáenz, Jon & Carreno-Madinabeitia, Sheila & Esnaola, Ganix, 2023. "Performance variations of wave energy converters due to global long-term wave period change (1900–2010)," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 268(C).
    16. Sun, Pengyuan & Liu, Senming & He, Hongzhou & Zhao, Yingru & Zheng, Songgen & Chen, Hu & Yang, Shaohui, 2021. "Simulated and experimental investigation of a floating-array-buoys wave energy converter with single-point mooring," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 637-650.
    17. Orszaghova, J. & Lemoine, S. & Santo, H. & Taylor, P.H. & Kurniawan, A. & McGrath, N. & Zhao, W. & Cuttler, M.V.W., 2022. "Variability of wave power production of the M4 machine at two energetic open ocean locations: Off Albany, Western Australia and at EMEC, Orkney, UK," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 197(C), pages 417-431.
    18. Joensen, Bárður & Bingham, Harry B., 2024. "Economic feasibility study for wave energy conversion device deployment in Faroese waters," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 295(C).
    19. Penalba, Markel & Guo, Chao & Zarketa-Astigarraga, Ander & Cervelli, Giulia & Giorgi, Giuseppe & Robertson, Bryson, 2023. "Bias correction techniques for uncertainty reduction of long-term metocean data for ocean renewable energy systems," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 219(P1).
    20. Choupin, Ophelie & Henriksen, Michael & Tomlinson, Rodger, 2022. "Interrelationship between variables for wave direction-dependent WEC/site-configuration pairs using the CapEx method," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 248(C).

    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:renene:v:221:y:2024:i:c:s0960148123017792. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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/renewable-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.