Combined Wind and Wave Energy System: A Review of Current Technology and State-of-the-art Simulation Tools

From a commercialization point of view, offshore renewable energies need to be cost competitive to achieve similar scales of development as compared to fossil-based energies. In relation to keeping the costs down while minimizing environmental impacts, a combined concept that integrates wind and wave energy systems emerges as a viable solution. The concept allows for the sharing of a supporting platform and infrastructures such as mooring systems, power cables and substations while taking advantage of the potential synergy between different technologies and energy sources. However, as compared to single energy systems, the combined concept presents an additional set of challenges and design concerns due to a higher level of system complexity. This work presents a review on combined wind and wave energy systems, starting with the classification of the combined systems into different sub-categories according to their features. The mechanism of energy conversion is described followed by a brief description of the numerical modelling of combined systems using state-of-the-art tools.