Challenges and future research

As the preceding chapters have shown - the ocean energy technologies we are looking at today are all at very different points in their development pathways. Some technologies - notably offshore wind - are now commercial and evolving rapidly (albeit with some level of public subsidy), whilst others are still making their way out of their land-based laboratories and into the sea. What they all have in common is that each and every technology must make a journey through the technology readiness levels until we reach the Eureka moment of `it works'. For some technologists, this is the ultimate goal - to show simply that it can be done. This journey will involve a continual development and must address the actual practicalities of a myriad of elements including installation, reliability, operability, fatigue and mean time to fail of everything from components to systems to people. For ocean energy technologies, this will ultimately involve significant test and development in the real sea environment - at specialist facilities such as European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) - where developers can discover the weak points in their design and then resolve them.