A Techno-Economic Model of a Hybrid Wave Energy Converter & Offshore Wind Turbine System in the Eastern Pacific

Abstract

In this study, the techno-economic implications of hybrid wave energy converter and offshore wind turbine farms are explored for a case-study site off the coast of Newport, Oregon. The correlation between wind and wave resources are measured via the Pearson ‘r’ method and found to be uncorrelated at the averaged annual scale with spikes in seasonal correlation and complementarity. A fixed charge rate method is then used to calculate the levelized cost of energy for point absorber-type wave energy conversion devices and fixed-bottom offshore wind turbines in both co-located and single-modality farm scenarios. These costs are coupled with hourly generation outputs via the Hybrid Optimization Performance Platform. The interconnection capacity factors and levelized costs of energy across a variety of scenarios are then analyzed, including variable interconnection sizes, plant sizing, and farm generational composition. Self-comparatively, hybridized systems exhibit increased techno-economic benefits with further wave energy converter penetration at higher plant rating-to-interconnection (R2I) size ratios. At the 175% R2I ratio for a 55:45 wind-wave farm, hybridized systems show a 32%–47% decrease in LCOE and a 4.5% increase in capacity factor compared to wave-only farms.

Against wind-only farms, the hybrid system demonstrates a 26% increase in interconnection capacity factor with an LCOE increase of 42–250 times. Lastly, in order to reach a capacity factor equivalent to the hybrid plant in the 175% R2I ratio scenario, wind farms utilizing the studied resource are shown to require an overall plant rating 10 times that of their interconnection size.