Because of the direction of prevailing winds and
the size of the Atlantic Ocean, North Western Europe,
including Ireland, has one of the largest wave energy
resources in the world. While there is a lack of
control over the availability of the underlying
power and significant differences in seasonal levels
of wave energy, output variation is expected to
be more predictable than for some other renewable
resources, such as wind.
In addition, while the potential output of wave
energy over any period of time will be correlated
to an extent with wind energy, the correlation is
far from perfect. In a sense, therefore, wave energy
is a store of energy that smoothes the peaks and
trough of the potential. As a result, harnessing
more than one type of energy, e.g. wind and wave
together, smoothes the overall output profile when
compared with concentrating on wind alone.
Tidal energy is not only fully predictable but
shows a very low level of correlation with wind
and wave. The extent of the Irish tidal stream resource
is not fully mapped, although a project is now underway
that will rectify this shortcoming to some degree.
http://www.marine.ie/industry+services/technology/renewable+energy/ocean+energy.pdf
Albania | Andorra | Austria | Belarus | Belgium |
Bosnia Herzigowina | Bulgaria | Croatia | Cyprus |
Czech Republic | Denmark | Estonia | Finland | France
| Germany | Greece | Hungary | Iceland | Ireland |
Italy | Latvia | Liechtenstein | Lithuania | Luxembourg
| FYR of Macedonia | Malta | FS of Moldova | Monaco
| Netherlands | Norway | Poland | Portugal | Romania
| Russia | San Marino | Serbia & Montenegro |
Slovakia | Slovenia | Spain
| Sweden | Switzerland | Ukraine | United
Kingdom | Yugoslavia
