Editorial: Advances and Challenges in Ocean Wave Energy Harvesting

Abstract

Wave energy resource is abundant and huge due to the vast oceanic area on the planet. On the other hand, exploitation of wave energy has never reached a satisfactory level that can replace to a large extent the traditional fossil fuel. The main disadvantage of wave power is the significantly random variability in several timescales: from wave to wave, with sea state, and from month to month (Falcão, 2010). This poses many super challenges to effectively and efficiently extract power from the sea waves. The present collection of research articles reflects the most recent contributions coming forward on harvesting wave energy, six coming from China (which is not completely surprising because of China’s massive investments in recent years) and one from Sweden.