Techno-Economic Assessment of a Hybrid Offshore Wind-Wave Farm: Case Study in Norway

Recent years have seen the development of cutting-edge technology, such as offshore wind turbines and wave energy converters. It has previously been investigated whether integrating offshore wind turbines with wave energy converters is feasible. Diversifying the sources of offshore renewable energy also lowers investment costs and power fluctuation. This paper focuses on the development of a hybrid wind-wave energy system as well as the development of a techno-economic model to assess the system performance for a case study. A levelized cost of energy is calculated for the hybrid system by the Norwegian North Sea based on current knowledge about the technology costs. The economic benefits of sharing the common components of a wind-wave hybrid farm are inspected. Combinations of different wind-wave offshore hybrid systems are presented. Three technologies for both offshore wind turbines and wave energy converters are compared to find the most cost-efficient device pairing. The potential benefits of a shared infrastructure and the operational expenses are included in the evaluation. The combination yielding the lowest production cost of the cases studied is a combination of 160 MW of wind power and 40 MW of wave power, with a levelized cost of energy of EUR 107/MWh when the shared costs are 15%. In the study region, the average electricity price in Autumn 2022 was over EUR 300/MWh due to the European energy crisis.

Automated summary

This study focuses on the development of a hybrid wind-wave energy system and assesses its performance using a techno-economic model. Different combinations of offshore wind turbines and wave energy converters are compared to find the most cost-efficient pairing. The study finds that a combination of 160 MW of wind power and 40 MW of wave power has the lowest production cost when the shared costs are 15%.