Question: @Jake Is it possible Global warming could affect your method of power generation?

Jake Cunningham answered on 21 Nov 2019:

Hi there, global warming would not affect the problem of power production, but it would affect the conditions of the seas. We are still trying to convert the mechanical energy of the waves into electrical energy (I’ll go into a little more detail). For starters in wave energy, we can split the conditions into three zones, linear (when the waves are small), nonlinear when the waves start to get bigger but we can still produce power and then there are conditions which are too violent to produce any power (this is when the device gets put into something called survival mode). How would global warming affect this, well for starters (if you didn’t already know this) waves are generated by surface winds. Our changing climate will drive changes in wind patterns around the globe. These changes in winds will alter global ocean wave conditions. It would affect my work because I use a model-based approach and I may need to improve upon the models that I am using to take these changing conditions into account.