The oceans of the earth offer vast amounts of renewable energy. Technologies to harness the power of the seas are at an early stage of development. Even the most advances technologies, namely tidal current and ocean wave still face considerable barriers and many obstacles remain. Research, development and innovation can help overcome those barriers. This review provides an overview over the current state of research in the field of ocean energy. In particular, the authors focus on research beyond technology or technological improvements. This article also highlights areas where research gaps exists and where future research efforts should be directed to.

Wave and tidal current energy – A review of the current state of research beyond technology

One of the most abundant energy sources exists in this world is the ocean wave energy. By far, it has shown to be the most clean, renewable, predicted energy and has raised the potential to compete with the current use of non-renewable energy sources. Recent research conducted on wave energy invention has opened a new dimension to slowly reduce the dependency on fossil fuel by introducing new technology on the renewable world but relatively lacking in economical aspect. This review brings the latest status on integration of wave energy device with other marine facilities, which is the breakwater structure that may possibly aid to cost sharing. Most researches done on this field highlighted countries experiencing rough sea condition and focused less on countries with medium wave condition as faced by the Asian continent. The potential for energy extraction and wave dissipation for medium wave condition will be discussed in this review by considering several aspects including reliability, effectiveness and performance. Finally, this review shows that the integration opens up a new dimension to acknowledge the technology harnessing ocean wave, especially for the Asian countries experiencing medium wave condition.

Wave energy device and breakwater integration: A review

Advancements of wave energy converters based on power take off (PTO) systems: A review

The main objectives of the present work are to review the global wave energy resources according to the most recent datasets available, to identify the locations with the worldwide highest wave energy potential and to assess in those locations the performance of some state-of-the-art wave energy converters. For this purpose, 15 years of wave data provided by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, covering the time interval 2000–2014, were considered, processed and analysed. After identifying the geographical regions with the highest wave power, 15 reference points, which were considered more relevant from the point of view of their wave energy potential, have been defined in each hemisphere (northern and southern, respectively). As a following step, corresponding to all of these reference points, the most relevant wave patterns have been identified, and this information was subsequently used to assess the expected power output of the wave energy converters considered. Some other relevant parameters, such as the capacity factor or the capture width, were evaluated as well. Following the results provided by this work, we can expect that most of the existent devices for harnessing wave energy would perform well near most of the coastal environments identified. Moreover, it also must be highlighted that in the future, wave energy farms can play a very active role from the point of view of coastal protection.

The performance of some state-of-the-art wave energy converters in locations with the worldwide highest wave power

A growing world population and socio-economic development are at the root of an ever-increasing energy demand throughout the world. Much of this demand is met by means of fossil fuels, leading to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change – hence the need for increasing the share of renewable energy sources in the global energy mix. Marine energy is a reliable, high-density source of energy with limited environmental impacts. Iran, with its long coastline, growing population, increasing energy demands and extreme air pollution, has a great potential for the development of marine energy. However, this potential has not received sufficient legislative or entrepreneurial attention so far. This review covers renewable energy resources in Iran in general – including solar, hydropower, wind, biomass and geothermal energy – with a focus on marine resources – wave and tidal energy. On the basis of the review, it can be stated that there are many energy hotspots with a high potential for marine energy development in the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

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Assessment of renewable energy resources in Iran; with a focus on wave and tidal energy

The application of renewable energies has increased rapidly in the previous decade to solve some problems such as growing energy demand and environmental issues. Wave power as a high potential renewable energy, is more predictable compared to other renewable sources. Although there are many research works about wave energy, however a few of them considered a suitable wave energy converter (WEC) as a power system for remote islands. Wave energy potential for remote islands is discussed in this review by regarding environmental impacts, various types of wave energy converters and applied wave power projects for various islands. The results show that wave energy plays a key role for sustainable development of offshore islands by considering the traditional looks and environmental protection.

R. Shamsipour

Papers

New approaches in harnessing wave energy: with special attention to small islands