Vision

Renewable energy development is essential to meet European and global emissions targets. At the same time, power providers must meet demand with a secure and reliable supply of electricity. Providing a consistent and stable supply of power produced by variable output renewable energy generation systems is a key challenge that must be overcome. In power systems with high penetration of variable renewable energy sources, solutions that can improve energy system balancing are of interest to power system operators and can improve system planning, reliability, and operation. Ocean energy has a production profile that is less correlated to wind energy (tidal energy, in particular, is not correlated with wind energy), and that is highly predictable. This suggests that the integration of ocean energy into power systems could reduce the system reserve capacity and associated capacity costs. Modelling future scenarios for power systems at various spatial and temporal scales can help to identify the optimum role of ocean energy in these systems and demonstrate the positive outcomes of ocean energy integration to sector representatives, market makers, policy advisors and key decision makers.