What is Wave Energy?
Every time something moves, there is energy involved and part of that energy can be gathered. The biggest actor on wave energy is the sun.
We can even say that in reality, wave energy is a form of solar energy.
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The sun heats up the air. When that happens, the heated air expands and becomes lighter. This makes it rise. This creates a vacuum effect and cold air flows to occupy the gap. This creates the wind. As the wind travels close to the sea surface, it creates a sucking effect that pulls the seawater up creating a small wave.
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Learn more with this external video.
Wind pushes the wave making the wave grow. These are called wind-driven waves. There are also tsunamis mostly caused by the motion of tectonic plates and tidal waves. In a sense a tide is a giant wave with almost 12 hours of period and a height equal to the tidal range.
Waves can travel for extremely vast distances. In fact, if nothing stops them, they will travel forever. This means that we can find waves where there is no wind which means that virtually, wave energy can be at a given place almost at any time.
Is Wave Energy Renewable?
Yes, wave energy is completely renewable. We read before that wave energy comes from the sun. The sun is almost 4 and a half billion years old and it’s expected to be there for 5 billion years more. Having sun, means having waves and solar energy, wind energy, and geothermal pressure are considered renewable resources, because, essentially, they have virtually an endless supply.
What are the Advantages of Wave Energy?
The best thing about wave energy is that it will never run out because waves are renewable. They don’t depend on seasons and they can always be counted on. They are environmentally friendly and a gift from nature. As a natural resource, they don’t produce waste or pollution
They are abundant at any coastal line in any part of the world. For centuries, the population have chosen to be close to water sources such as rivers and oceans and therefore it is mostly concentrated close to the coastal line. Coastal cities tend to be well-populated, so lots of people can benefit from wave energy plants.
They do have a small footprint: The physical size of a pilot farm of ES-Wave devices, and the space it requires, is a fraction of what wind turbines would require to create a similar amount of energy. This is because the array of devices can be placed much closer together (wind turbines need to be separated from each other using a larger area because their blades create turbulences in the wind flow; the ES-Wave does not suffer from such interferences) Comparing the Beatrice wind farm (84 turbines and 131 Km²) with our TWEFDA Hub (6 ES-Wave occupying 18,390 m²), the ratio is more than 500 times less spatial footprint per device.