Development
Limited
Barriers to Entry
The primary barrier to entry is the healthy skepticism of the ocean engineering community to any proclamation of success in harvesting wave energy. Many claims have been made and good attempts have failed, such as the Osprey plant in England. Recently the first pre-commercial array of Pelamis wave energy converters broke down after four months. Until full-size Wavebergs have survived a few storms and continued to generate power over a year without unanticipated maintenance, this skepticism will prevail.
Interestingly, even if catastrophic storms destroy the Waveberg energy harvester, profitability does not decline significantly. The floating harvester is only half of the capital cost of an installation and unit costs will decline as production increases. Truly destructive storms occur only rarely on any given stretch of coastline; the annual odds of being hit by a hurricane in Florida are 1 in 20 at any one site. Moreover, there are no destructive storms in the tropics, between 20° North and South; they have to travel north and south for the Coriolis Force to become strong enough to drive their rotation.
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“The copious variety and volume of this subject invention confirms the viability of wave energy conversion yet exploitation is stilled in early stages of technical development.
The United States has exhibited weak effort compared to overseas projects in Norway, Denmark, Japan and the United Kingdom.”
— OWEC Proposal
