Methodology to Calculate the ACE and HPQ Metrics Used in the Wave Energy Prize

Technical Report · Thu Mar 08 00:00:00 EST 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1426063· OSTI ID:1426063

Driscoll, Frederick R. ^[1]; Weber, Jochem W. ^[1]; Jenne, Dale S. ^[1]; Thresher, Robert W. ^[1]; Fingersh, Lee J. ^[1]; Bull, Dianna ^[2]; Dallman, Ann ^[2]; Gunawan, Budi ^[2]; Ruehl, Kelley ^[2]; Newborn, David ^[3]; Quintero, Miguel ^[3]; LaBonte, Alison ^[4]; Karwat, Darshan ^[4]; Beatty, Scott ^[5]

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1. National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
2. Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
3. Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), West Bethesda, MD (United States). NSWC Carderock Division
4. Dept. of Energy (DOE), Washington DC (United States)
5. Cascadia Coast Research Ltd., Victoria, BC (Canada)

The U.S. Department of Energy's Wave Energy Prize Competition encouraged the development of innovative deep-water wave energy conversion technologies that at least doubled device performance above the 2014 state of the art. Because levelized cost of energy (LCOE) metrics are challenging to apply equitably to new technologies where significant uncertainty exists in design and operation, the prize technical team developed a reduced metric as proxy for LCOE, which provides an equitable comparison of low technology readiness level wave energy converter (WEC) concepts. The metric is called 'ACE' which is short for the ratio of the average climate capture width to the characteristic capital expenditure. The methodology and application of the ACE metric used to evaluate the performance of the technologies that competed in the Wave Energy Prize are explained in this report.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
• DOE Contract Number: AC36-08GO28308
• OSTI ID: 1426063
• Report Number(s): NREL/TP--5000-70592
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

17 WIND ENERGY
42 ENGINEERING
ACE
wave energy converter
Wave Energy Prize Competition
WEC