OES Annual Report 2012 - Ocean Energy Systems

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For marine electricity
The focus is shifting toward demonstration of reliable and scalable projects that can deliver marine electricity
of value to the consumer. It must be demonstrated, even through these initial trials, that it will be practical
for a significant part of the power portfolio to come from marine renewable energy. More importantly, the
potential for improvements in operations and costs must be demonstrated to make the case for marine
renewable energy as a reliable and competitive electricity resource.
What must marine renewable energy demonstrate?
It was suggested earlier that there are significant parts of an industrial-scale project that may not be
addressed in device–level demonstrations. This includes some of the following aspects:
Technical solutions:
Balance of Plant
The functionality of devices may have been demonstrated, but plans for utility-scale installations and their
servicing can be expected to drive the development of new approaches to: foundations, installation and
service vessels, cable interconnection and a host of other technical and operational interfaces that integrate
those generation systems into a commercial plant.
Generation systems
For marine renewable energy plants to be accepted market solutions, they must demonstrate that they
can meet utility interconnection requirements. While a system may be blind to a small demonstration,
experience with pilots large enough to attract system administrator interest is critical. System control and
data delivery needs to meet utility industry standards. Resource forecasting, plant availability and energy
forecasts have to be suitable as planning and operating tools.
Balance of Project
The scale change from device trials to prototype arrays will require new responses from regulators, supply
chain, manufacturers and financiers. It is critical that this prototype value chain be demonstrated if the
scalability of marine energy is to be pursued.
CAPEX acceptability
System capital costs have to reduce by almost 2/3 to compete wind. 9 This reduction in CAPEX has to be
achieved by incorporation of new innovations in project design and development, learnings from doing
that eliminate costs, and economies of scale that come from series production of components and from
maximizing deployments from project infrastructure. This trend will only be driven by a focus on the needs
of multi-device projects.
OPEX viability
Operations and maintenance expenditures also have to be reduced by almost 2/3. Significant improvements
will come through integrations of operations and maintenance planning into equipment selection or design,
availability of service infrastructure that matches project needs for planned and emergency service and
through development of operating experience and the efficiencies that that will bring. Only with largerscale
deployments will the necessity to refine operations and maintenance come to a head.
Conclusion
While there is certainly a lot of room for proving and improving of marine renewable energy technologies,
it is clear that focusing on prototyping an industrial approach will drive those improvements and the
emergence of a host of enabling technologies and operational approaches. The necessary technology
transfer, supply chain development, customer engagement, access to the financial sector and political
support depends on that demonstration of what this industry will look like and what it can offer.
9
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ANNUAL
REPORT 2012