On Wednesday 19th October, Dr Shona Pennock from the University of Edinburgh’s Policy and Innovation Group presented the EVOLVE project research on the System Benefits of Ocean Energy at the International Conference on Ocean Energy (ICOE). The three day conference, held in Donostia / San Sebastián, is a global ocean energy event focused on the industrial development of renewable ocean energy, bringing together hundreds of people from across the sector. The EVOLVE results were presented at the ‘Security through diversity’ session at ICOE, and complemented a range of studies which quantified the value of combining ocean energy with existing wind and solar deployments in a variety of regions around Europe.
Shona’s presentation focused on the EVOLVE country-scale power systems modelling studies, and the quantification of cost and carbon reduction due to including arrays of wave and tidal generation within future energy mixes. These system benefits have been quantified through modelling of three regions: Great Britain, Ireland and Portugal. It has been found that including ocean energy within the electricity mix produces system benefits for each of these regions, over multiple scenarios and years. These system benefits take the form of consistently lower dispatch costs, consistently lower carbon emissions and consistently higher price capture.
