Even though tropical islands have an opportunity to transition to 100% renewable energy by having great access to renewable energy sources like wind and solar, there are constraints keeping them away from reaching this goal and ocean energy could be one of the solutions that could make these islands fully-powered by renewables.
Namely, islands often do not have an interconnection to a large electricity grid, and the lack of effective storage solutions limits the penetration of intermittent wind and solar energy.
Furthermore, space requirements of these kinds of renewable energy technologies make a widespread deployment on many islands unfeasible.
Nevertheless, tropical islands have the potential to utilize ocean energy and thus embark on the journey towards transition to 100% renewable energy.
Msc. Anne-Marije Zwerver discussed the matter at a lunch lecture held on 27 March at the Delft University of Technology, and demonstrated the potential of integrating ocean energy in the energy mix of tropical islands with a case study.
Take a look at the recording of the lecture released by the Delft University of Technology.