Improving R&D impact on wave energy commertial development

When analyzing the R&D activities in Europe, it is apparent that the agenda is not sufficiently driven by the main technological and economic issues that need to be solved if wave energy is expected to attain commercial success, namely energy costs, survivability and environmental impacts. Hence, the present paper aims to call for a collaborative project to assess from a techno-economical point of view the potential competitiveness and constraints of wave energy concepts, in order to narrow the amount of different concepts under development nowadays, so that funds can be focused more cost-effectivelly. In this sense, the paper presents a discussion regarding hydrodynamic modeling methodologies to assess the energy output and the survivability strategy of the most promising technologies proposed, in order to carry out a comparative study among them. Nevertheless, when performing a feasibility study, technical constraints should be considered to confirm if the device engineering, construction and operation and maintenance are viable. Accordingly, a technical feasibility discussion followed by an economic analysis, to evaluate if the technology is potentially competitive or not, is also presented.