Publications

Systems Engineering Applied to the Development of a Wave Energy Farm

Roberts, Jesse D.; Bull, Diana L.; Costello, Ronan P.; Babarit, Aurelien B.; Nielsen, Kim N.; Ferreira, Claudio B.; Kennedy, Ben K.; Malins, Robert J.; Dykes, Kathryn D.; Weber, Jochem W.

A motivation for undertaking this stakeholder requirements analysis and Systems Engineering exercise is to document the requirements for successful wave energy farms to facilitate better design and better design assessments. A difficulty in wave energy technology development is the absence to date of a verifiable minimum viable product against which the merits of new products might be measured. A consequence of this absence is that technology development progress, technology value, and technology funding have largely been measured, associated with, and driven by technology readiness, measured in technology readiness levels (TRLs). Originating primarily from the space and defense industries, TRLs focus on procedural implementation of technology developments of large and complex engineering projects, where cost is neither mission critical nor a key design driver. The key deficiency with the TRL approach in the context of wave energy conversion is that WEC technology development has been too focused on commercial readiness and not enough on the stakeholder requirements and particularly economic viability required for market entry.