Reliability of marine energy converters

Abstract

Growing demand for energy in the world along with depletion of fossil fuels and global initiative to achieve substantial cuts in greenhouse gas emissions have led to an increasing interest in renewable energy technologies. Many governments set targets to significantly increase the amount of energy from renewable sources in the next few decades. Marine energy, i.e., tidal streams and waves, is one of major sources of renewable energy.

Since extraction of marine energy is a new technology there is significant uncertainty associated with the prediction of the performance of energy converting devices (e.g., tidal stream turbines, wave energy converters), which causes stakeholders to be more cautious and less willing to invest into this area. The aim of this mini-symposium is to bring together researchers and practitioners concerned about reliability and availability of marine energy converters. Possible contributions may deal with any aspects related to this problem such as methodology/methods for the reliability assessment of marine energy converters, reliability of their subassemblies and components, reliability and availability issues related to their deployment and maintenance, case studies of failures of such devices, etc.

Organizers

Dimitri V. Val, School of the Built Environment, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK, (D.Val@hw.ac.uk)
Jens Peter Kofoed, Department of Civil Engineering, Aalborg University, Denmark