Wave resource in UK

Nowadays we are enjoying great news even coming from mass media about the huge potential and possibilities of wave and tidal sector. Guardian published early this year "UK could become leading exporter of wave and tidal power, say MPs" based on a report from Energy and Climate Change Committee calling on government to establish long term goals for marine energy to give guarantees and estability for further industrial developments.

WAVES

But, what is the real potential of waves? There are several studies trying to bring light to this issue. Independently of which one you read, all of them assure a potential far beyond our electrical energy consumption even highlighting that the wave global power potential is estimated to be around 8,000-80,000TWh/y (1-10TW), which is the same order of magnitude as world electrical energy consumption.

Evidently, not all the spots has the same potential. Best spots are found between 30-60 degrees latitude with a potential of 20-70 kW/m because the strong storms there. But for 30 degrees latitude there is a good choice when the waves come from regular wind blowing. Even with a less energy/potential, these places has an advantage over the first ones because the variability is reduced as well, which means generate electricity in a more regular basis and, maybe, reduce the mechanical efforts suffered by the devices.

UK

It is expected that marine energy could provide up to 27GW of capacity in the UK by 2050, much of which is expected to be deployed after 2020...but it will not become real if there isn't a real support from the Government today.

In 2008 the Department of Energy and Climate Change [DECC] published an online interactive webGIS version of the UK Marine Renewable Energy Resources Atlas with the clue of the highest potential spots.

The most conservative studies estimate the accesible potential around 50 TWh/y mainly situated off the northwest coast of Scotland and the seas of the southwest of England. This potential represents 12.4% of UK electricity generation, demanding the commercial development of the industry which both will lead to a cost decrease and will help in the path to become UK a leader in this area...but if there is a industrial development, the potential resource technically available could be much higher, as the wind industry development has demonstrated.

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  online interactive webGIS version of the UK Marine Renewable Energy Resources Atlas

  
  


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  Wave resource map

  
  

Image: Annual Mean Wave Height Crown ©2004