Potentials
In the upcoming years a large number of offshore wind farms will be build. At the designated water areas some considerable energy potential exists through ocean waves.
By linking the two forms of energy not only the total energy output can be increased, but also smoothed due to the fact that the yield curve has a time delay of wave energy to wind energy. In simplified words: if the wind starts blowing it takes a while to build up the waves and when the wind extenuates, the waves are running quite some time longer. In 2010 a study of the Stanford University for an American site with a coupled energy park, detected that about 20% higher yields can be derived compared to a pure wind farm with a given line capacity. Shared infrastructure, e.g. subsea cables and substations could be better utilized, whereby the pro rata costs for energy transport would also decrease.
