Abstract
The total wave energy resource intersecting the 25 m depth contour around Australia has been estimated to exceed 1800 TWh/yr. The majority of this resource however is located along the southern margin of the Australian continent, whereas Australia's population and associated electricity grid infrastructure is predominantly found along Australia's eastern coast. Thus, we investigate what resource is available to meet Australia's future low-emission electricity needs which is proximal (within 50, 20, or 10 km) of existing grid infrastructure. Within 50/20/10 km of existing Australian grid infrastructure , we estimate the available omnidirectional wave energy flux to be 704/209/40 TWh/yr. Considering Marine Protected Areas as a further spatial constraint on accessible resource reduces these estimates to 502/154/32 TWh/yr. We investigate the potential wave energy generation within these proximal locations of existing infrastructure, determining performance of 4 independent wave energy converters (using public domain power matrices) for given local wave conditions (significant wave height and peak wave period) received from the Australian Wave Energy Atlas. The best performing of these devices operates with a capacity factor up to 0.37. When deployed relatively sparsely (at 3.35 devices/km) along the 25m contour within 50/20/10 km of grid infrastructure (and outside of any MPA) this device could generate 68.6/25.7/6.2 TWh/yr. These are notable fractions of Australia's current total electricity generation of 254 TWh/yr (in 2014/2015).