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Ocean Energy in Ireland

Indicative Wave Resource Levels

Because of the direction of prevailing winds and the size of the Atlantic Ocean, North Western Europe, including Ireland, has one of the largest wave energy resources in the world. While there is a lack of control over the availability of the underlying power and significant differences in seasonal levels of wave energy, output variation is expected to be more predictable than for some other renewable resources, such as wind.
In addition, while the potential output of wave energy over any period of time will be correlated to an extent with wind energy, the correlation is far from perfect. In a sense, therefore, wave energy is a store of energy that smoothes the peaks and trough of the potential. As a result, harnessing more than one type of energy, e.g. wind and wave together, smoothes the overall output profile when compared with concentrating on wind alone.

Tidal energy is not only fully predictable but shows a very low level of correlation with wind and wave. The extent of the Irish tidal stream resource is not fully mapped, although a project is now underway that will rectify this shortcoming to some degree.

http://www.marine.ie/industry+services/technology/renewable+energy/ocean+energy.pdf

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Related GENI Resources

Definition Ocean Energy
Current Articles on Renewable Energy Resources and Transmission
National Energy Grid Maps

Links

Irish Energy Centre

EUEA (European Ocean Energy Association)
European Wave Energy Thematic Network