Energy absorption from parks of point-absorbing wave energy converters in the Swedish exclusive economic zone

In a future energy system based on renewable energy sources, wave energy will most likely play a role due to its high energy potential and low intermittency. The power production from parks of wave energy converters of point absorber type has been extensively studied. This is also the case for the wave energy resource at many coastal areas around the globe. Wave energy has not yet reached a commercial level, and a large variety of technologies exist; therefore, an established method to calculate the technical potential for wave energy has still not been established. To estimate the technical potential of wave energy conversion, some approximations inevitably need to be taken due to the systems high complexity. In this study, a detailed mapping of the wave climate and simulation of large arrays of hydrodynamically cross-coupled wave energy converters are combined to calculate the technical potential for wave energy conversion in the Swedish exclusive economic zone. A 16-year wave data set distributed in a 1.1 km x 1.1 km grid is used to calculate the absorbed energy from a park of 200 generic point absorbers. The areas with best potential have an average annual energy absorption of 16 GWh for the selected wave energy park adapted to 1 km(2) when using a constant damping, while the theoretical upper bound is 63 GWh for the same area.