Prospects of wave power grid integration

Wave energy extraction technologies are rapidly maturing, leading to increased expectations that they will soon be integrated into the electrical grid. This paper reviews the state of the art technologies along with system level modeling while providing an initial study of the impacts of integration on a typical electrical grid network as compared to the closest related technology, wind energy extraction. In particular, wave power is computed from high resolution measured raw wave data to evaluate the effects of integrating wave generation into a 5-bus PJM inspired system. The system with no renewable energy sources and the system with comparable wind generation have been used as a reference for evaluation. Simulations show that wave power integration has good prospects in reducing the requirements of capacity and ramp reserves, thus bringing the overall cost of generation down.