Abstract
Marine operations that are required for the development and service of offshore wave energy farms represent a significant proportion of the total project costs. Marine operations related to installation, maintenance and decommissioning contribute costs to CAPEX, OPEX and DECEX respectively. These operations can be optimized through design and innovation to improve the LCOE of the project. This paper presents an analysis of marine operations in offshore renewable energy projects and will show the importance of early, detailed analysis and optimization of these activities. The analysis uses general-purpose techno-economic analysis software developed by Wave Venture. The software provides an integrated engineering and financial simulation specifically designed for the needs of offshore renewable energy technology. An example 100MW wave energy farm off the west coast of Ireland is defined and analysed to demonstrate the capabilities of the techno-economic analysis incorporating a marine operations logistics model. The logistics model represents the installation, operations and decommissioning phases of the proposed wave farm. This includes the offshore operations, transport types, environmental conditions, permits and device characteristics. The model is given a hierarchical structure to represent the real-world nature of project and technology cost accumulation. The model also simulates revenue from a time series analysis of the combined wave resource data and the wave energy device characteristics. The results demonstrate the strength of integrated logistics and finance software in the analysis and design of wave farms, and how these simulations can lead to significant improvements in the LCoE of offshore renewable energy projects.