Plymouth City Council has set challenging targets for reduction of the city’s carbon footprint. In support of these targets, this report contains an assessment of the feasibility of adding wave energy converters to Plymouth breakwater, hence providing a generation capability contributing to an increased uptake of renewable energy generation. This study is set within the context of a broader investigation into the addition of wave energy generation capability to breakwaters in general.
A resource assessment shows that a Plymouth breakwater generation system consisting of 76 Oscillating Water Column (OWC) devices could provide an annual average power output of 1400kW and a total annual output of 12300 MWh of renewable energy. The Plymouth development is compared against other existing and planned OWC installations, leading to a comparison of overall generation efficiencies confirming the quality of the various data sources. The overall efficiency (wave energy intensity to electrical energy) of the OWC plants is shown to be consistently around 30%.
A Plymouth breakwater plant would be expected to cost £70-90 million, resulting in an annual carbon footprint reduction of 4.6 million tonnes CO2 equivalent and an annual generation income of £1.3 million.
An environmental impact assessment scoping exercise investigated the impact of the added energy generation capability relative to a standard breakwater structure. This study showed suggested that the impacts such as increased noise, risk of interference with marine mammals, view interference and changed sediment transport would necessitate a full Environmental Impact Assessment.
Faculty of Science