External forces influencing the development of wave energy technologies for power markets

Understanding wave energy requirements is paramount to the development of any successful technology. However, wave energy development cannot be entirely isolated from the wider context in which the technology is designed to operate, since multiple external forces influence its conception, development and operation. The external drivers and the stakeholder groups are the two main forces that define this overarching context. External drivers are tightly connected to the intended market application, whereas the stakeholder groups define the technology performance expectations. Each intended market application may call for a different combination of external drivers. In turn, the ranking of those external drivers to each stakeholder group will ultimately dictate the importance of the wave energy requirements.

This report aims to assess the relative importance of the main forces influencing the development of wave energy technologies, namely external drivers and stakeholders in two power markets, the utility-scale generation and powering remote communities. This assessment has been carried out through a survey to international wave energy representatives consisting of a varied mix of both geographical origins and background.

The analysis of results found that the ranking of wave energy drivers considerably differs for the utility-scale generation market and the powering remote communities’ counterpart. Furthermore, two broad clusters of stakeholders arise. The main implication is that the development of wave energy technologies will be primarily influenced by the needs from the Owner and the Government for utility-scale and the remote community projects respectively. The knowledge of the overarching context should lead first to a better assessment of the stakeholder requirements, then evaluation of technology-agnostic capabilities and finally quantification of technical performance for the physical embodiment.