Abstract
This paper presents the details of a study performed to investigate the feasibility of a wave energy system made up of a number of Weptos wave energy converters (WECs) and sets of batteries, to provide the full energy demands of a small island in Denmark. Two different configurations with 2 and 4 Weptos machines respectively with a combined installed power of 750 kW (and a capacity factor of 0.2) are presented. One full year simulation, based a detailed hourly analysis of the power consumption and wave energy resource assessment in the surrounding sea, is used to demonstrate that both configurations, supplemented by a 3 MWh battery bank and a backup generator, can provide the energy needs of the island. The proposed configurations are selected on the basis of a forecast optimization of price estimates for the individual elements of the solutions. The simulations show that Weptos WECs actually deliver 50% more than average consumption over the year, but due to the imbalance between consumption and production, this is not enough to cover all situations, which necessitates a backup generator that must cover 5–7% of consumption, in situations where there are too few waves and the battery bank is empty.
Highlights
The temporal variability of wave energy has effects on the electricity supply to the grid.The comparison of the hourly variability of the resource, together with the hourly distributions of demands and production, provides the first indications of the dimensioning and design of an effective system
The simulations show that Weptos wave energy converters (WECs) deliver 50% more than average consumption over the year, but due to the imbalance between consumption and production, this is not enough to cover all situations, which necessitates a backup generator that must cover 5–7% of consumption, in situations where there are too few waves and the battery bank is empty
The study wants to make a contribution to the investigation of the performance of wave energy systems on an hourly basis based on the energy demands of a small island
Summary
The temporal variability of wave energy has effects on the electricity supply to the grid.The comparison of the hourly variability of the resource, together with the hourly distributions of demands and production, provides the first indications of the dimensioning and design of an effective system. The design of an effective system requires three main reliable sets of data: hourly distribution of electricity consumption, a long record of validated metocean data and analytics for the specific location and validated power production of the adopted wave energy technology. These last two are not easy to obtain; the wave energy resource is unevenly mapped around the globe, and very few wave energy technologies have reached the pre-commercial stage [2], so limited validated data exist relative to power production in real sea. While the variability of the resource has been under discussion for some years [3], there are only few studies analyzing the performance of wave energy systems on an hourly basis and, at the same time, considering annual variability [4]
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