Enhancing synergy for power generation and coastal protection through wave energy converters

Combining efforts to promote both power generation and coastal protection would offer significant advantages for the marine sector. It presents an opportunity to combine resources for the dual purpose of adapting to the effects of climate change, and producing clean energy, thereby potentially fostering growth in the blue economy. Wave Energy Converters (WECs), and particularly WEC farms, are ideally suited to fulfill this dual role, as they can harvest energy from waves, thus also mitigating their impact on coastlines, with the generation of milder waves in their lee. This research investigates the impact of a small WEC farm on both objectives. Different strategies are proposed, and compared, to address this dual focus. Strategies may involve establishing a minimum threshold for wave attenuation, while maximizing power production, and others aim to optimize both power production, and wave attenuation simultaneously. The former strategies can be easily tailored to meet specific coastal protection requirements, at a particular site. The latter entail addressing a bi-objective optimization problem, with two concurrent objectives. This paper explores these different approaches, ultimately laying the groundwork for a comprehensive multi-query analysis of WEC farms.