Introduction
I chose this topic for my final project for many different reasons, the most important being my insatiable interest in learning more about renewable energy resources. I have done research in the past at UW-Madison on wind energy as power source for humans, and when I first inspected wave power generation it seemed to have an answer for all of wind power's shortcomings.
My first goal with this project was to conduct research on the advantages of wave power systems over other forms of power and the feasibility of implementing this concept with today's technology.
Another goal was to identify and study at least one example of an existing or planned wave power system that is being used or will be used in the future not just for research purposes, but for actual power generation. This goal was achieved in a US Naval Research project that is discussed in the Ocean Power Technologies section of this page.
Finally, I used actual wave data obtained from the National Data Buoy Center to calculate an efficiency for the system employed by Ocean Power Technologies. Using this efficiency, I was able to calculate some of the most advantageous (and disadvantageous) places around North America to use the aforementioned system to generate power.