Energy: at ENEA a new low-cost technology to produce electricity from sea waves

An alternative to expensive and polluting diesel plants powering small Italian islands

This low-cost, smart technology extracting energy from the sea waves it’s called PEWEC (Pendulum Wave Energy Converter), and it has been developed by ENEA in collaboration with the Polytechnic of Turin.

It has been studied specifically for the Italian coast waves, characterized by mild intensity, small size and high-frequency.  It’s a floating, raft-resembling device, to be positioned offshore, relaying on the hull oscillation induced by waves.

“The device allows to harvest clean, renewable, low-cost energy from the sea. The Italian islands, powered by expensive and polluting diesel plants, are the ideal candidate for this new technology.” Gianmaria Sannino, Head of the ENEA Climate Modelling and Impacts Laboratory said at the Conference “Electric Energy from the sea”.

“Italy could advantageously harness energy from waves, thanks to its 8.000 km of coasts; in fact just ten of these devices could produce enough electricity to power 30.000 households.”

“The National Action Plan for Renewable Energy envisages the installation of a number of such devices with an energy output of 3 MW by 2020.

The Italian wave energy potential is comparable to that of the east coast of the North Sea, since the average offshore wave power of the north-west of Sardinia is 13 kW/m and that of the north-west of Sicily is 10 kW/m.”

Energy production from sea waves is a valid opportunity for promoting economic growth, improving safety of energy supply and, most of all, boost competitiveness through technology innovation.

This technology has several advantages also compared to wind and photovoltaic energy: a low environmental and visual impact, a lower daily variability and a favorable season variation, since wave energy potential is higher in winter, when energy consumption is at its maximum.

This device also reduces coastal erosion by depowering the force of the waves crashing against the coast, reducing impacts on the flora and fauna of the sea.

ENEA has also drawn up the “The Mediterranean Wave Energy Atlas”, a map of the areas presenting the best characteristics for sea energy production, containing all the useful data for the estimation of wave energy and the identification of the more apt technologies, specifically: speed of currents, height of waves, intensity of tides.

ENEA has also developed an operating system for sea state prediction up to five days, able to estimate the quantity of energy to feed into the electrical grid to an accuracy of a few hundred meters.

At European level ENEA is participating in the joint research program on the energy from the sea “JP Marine Renewable Energy” proposed by the European Energy Research Alliance. (EERA)

Harnessing energy from waves is a priority for the European Commission for the development of the Blue Economy: an action plan for the years 2014-2020 with the objective of reaching an installed power of 3.6 GW within 2020 and of 188 GW within 2050 has been presented.

The video is available for download and reproduction at: http://www.afs.enea.it/project/webenea/videostampa/video/