A Brief History of Wave Energy

Abstract

There is enough energy in the waves that hit the world’s coasts every day to power about 1 billion homes. Not all of it can be practically harnessed, but even a small proportion would mean a lot for the security of our energy supply. This talk will give an overview of the history of wave energy, where we will look at some examples of wave energy devices that have been proposed throughout history. It will also cover some fundamentals of wave energy absorption, address some common misconceptions, and highlight some open questions that remain to be answered.

Adi Kurniawan

Research Fellow, Oceans Graduate School

My research covers aspects of wave-structure interactions, wave energy conversion, and multi-objective optimisation.