Assessment of power characteristics and correlations for global ocean solar, wind and wave energy resources

Ocean solar, wind, and wave energies are of great potential, and are capable to provide an ideal solution for mitigating the effect of climate change. However, power generation from an individual renewable energy resource is typically intermittent and cannot guarantee the stability of power production. Therefore, synthetic developing and utilising multiple ocean renewable energies has been proposed as an effective alternative to reduce the intermittency of power generation. The performance of hybrid ocean renewable energy systems significantly depends on the natural synergy or complementarity of various energy resources. Currently, only a few studies look deep into the correlations among ocean solar, wind and wave energies, and this study aims to examine the spatio-temporal distribution and stability of ocean solar, wind and wave energies. The Kendall correlation coefficient is used to quantify the synergies and complementarities among these three ocean renewable energy resources. In addition, 10 representative reference sites are specified for detailed analysis. The study find that global ocean solar energy reaches local maxima of 268.92-271.40 W/m2 with relatively low CoV values of 0.21-0.24 in low-latitude waters, whereas ocean wind and wave energies are most abundant in the westerly belts of both hemispheres, with wind power density reaching 1270.49-1765.68 W/m2 and wave power density reaching 52.94-107.10 kW/m. Ocean solar energy shows moderate and weak complementarity with wind energy over 0.67% and 30.05% of global sea areas, respectively, and with wave energy over 8.22% and 37.32%, while ocean wind and wave energies show weak, moderate, and strong synergy over 33.49%, 35.45%, and 4.60%, respectively.