A university student from Texas writes:
“I read the ‘types of devices proposed by these teams include point absorbers, terminators, attenuators, oscillating water columns, and oscillating wave surge converters’ from your website. I am just reviewing some papers about WECs and found that there is another type of WEC which is called overtopping. My question is whether the overtopping type is less efficient so none of the top teams use it.”
(“WEC” means “Wave Energy Converter” or sometimes “Wave Energy Conversion.” It is common to say “WEC device” as well.)
To answer, the Wave Energy Prize provides an avenue to allow teams to develop innovative technologies that have the prospect for achieving a long-term impact of lowering the cost of electricity to make wave energy competitive with other means of generating power. If someone came forward with a design for an “overtopping device” that shows promise achieving our overall program goal, as outlined in our Technology Performance Level (TPL)* assessment, then it may well have progressed in the competition.
To learn more about TPL, refer to “Details on the Technical Submission” written by Jochem Weber from National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
Wave Energy Prize Blog 