Abstract
Wave energy has potential of contributing significantly to the world’s electricity production, but the cost of electricity is still too high to be competitive with other energy technologies. In this paper, an economical model for large-scale wave energy systems is developed and used to optimize parks of point-absorbing wave energy converters. The optimization is performed with a genetic algorithm, and the aim is to find optimal configurations with minimal levelized cost of electricity for the full system. The economical model includes capital and operational costs both for the individual wave energy devices, and for the electrical system including substations and transmission to shore. The results show that the cost of energy of parks of different sizes in a restricted ocean area is expected to have a minimum point, and that the genetic algorithm is able to find layouts with cost of electricity comparable with benchmark cases.