Abstract
The whole energy system requires renewables that scale and produce reliable, valuable energy at an acceptable cost. The key to increasing the deployment of ocean energy is bringing down development and operating costs. This paper proposes a structured approach to innovation in ocean energy systems that would spur innovation and expand the market for ocean energy. This approach can be used by a wide range of stakeholders—including technology and project developers and investors—when considering creating or improving designs. The Structured Innovation design tool within the DTOceanPlus suite is one of a kind beyond the current state-of-the-art. It enables the adaptation and integration of systematic problem-solving tools based on quality function deployment (QFD), the theory of inventive thinking (TRIZ), and the failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) methodologies for the ocean energy sector. In obtaining and assessing innovative concepts, the integration of TRIZ into QFD enables the designers to define the innovation problem, identifies trade-offs in the system, and, with TRIZ as a systematic inventive problem-solving methodology, generates potential design concepts for the contradicting requirements. Additionally, the FMEA is used to assess the technical risks associated with the proposed design concepts. The methodology is demonstrated using high-level functional requirements for a small array of ten tidal turbines to improve the devices layout and power cabling architecture. The Structured Innovation design tool output comprises critical functional requirements with the highest overall impact and the least organisational effort to implement, along with appropriate alternative solutions to conflicting requirements.
Highlights
The global electricity supply is changing rapidly with the rise of variable renewable sources and low-carbon technologies
The Structured Innovation design tool for ocean energy technologies proposed here allows, for the first time, to “provoke innovation and help represent the voice of the customer through the design process, manage risk, and produce new concepts by integrating the following approaches” [46]:
An example of a fundamental relationship generated with this method is shown in Structured innovation approaches are needed to achieve the unprecedented innovation required to reduce the costs of novel renewable energy-generating technologies, such as ocean energy technologies, to achieve the net-zero targets
Summary
The global electricity supply is changing rapidly with the rise of variable renewable sources and low-carbon technologies. The ocean energy sector can benefit from the established, more mature industries such as offshore wind, considering the many synergies and transfer possibilities between sectors Leveraging these potential synergies can help address the challenges related to the cost competitiveness of ocean energy technologies. Tidal stream technologies are still at a precommercial stage and wave energy technologies are still at demonstration level Wave energy developers, such as CorPower [5] and Bombora [6], continue to engage in innovation and demonstration activities, such as supported by the Wave Energy Scotland (WES) funding programme [7]. It is critical that developers select the most promising technologies to take into the development process to make the most efficient and effective use of limited funding and other resources
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