Towards a cost-based design of heaving point absorbers V. Piscopo a,⇑ , G. Benassai b , R. Della Morte b , A. Scamardella a a The University of Naples ‘‘Parthenope”, Department of Science and Technology, Centro Direzionale Isola C4, 80143 Naples, Italy b The University of Naples ‘‘Parthenope”, Department of Engineering, Centro Direzionale Isola C4, 80143 Naples, Italy article info Article history: Received 8 November 2016 Revised 22 February 2017 Accepted 27 March 2017 Available online 31 March 2017 Keywords: Heaving point absorber Phase control Hydrodynamic optimization Levelised Cost of Energy Annual Energy Production per unit area abstract The need for increasing the share of sea resources in the global renewable energy market requires a specialized design of wave energy converters and Power Take-Off units that, in turn, may be capable of maximising power production and minimizing extraction costs. In this respect, as optimization of wave energy converter performances, by properly tuning relevant hydrodynamic parameters and controlling the motion in waves, reveals a basic issue to reduce energy production charges, a new cost-based design procedure for heaving point absorber type devices is developed, with the main aim of accounting for wave climate at deployment site, reliable device operational profiles and design restraint criteria for both floating buoy and Power Take-Off unit. The newly proposed cost-based procedure is applied to detect the optimum configuration of heaving point absorber devices at several candidate deployment sites. Finally, the incidence of wave climate and available energy resources, on detecting the optimum device configuration and assessing relevant energy production costs, is investigated and fully discussed. Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Interest in power generation from waves has increased since the oil crisis of the 1970s, mainly due to the rapid growth of oil prices and climate change threats that induced a major change in renewable energy scenarios and raised the interest in large-scale energy production from waves [27]. In this respect, since the milestone work by Salter [52], a variety of wave energy conversion systems has been developed by the international scientific community, thanks to several research and development programs, initially funded by British and Norwegian Governments, with the construction in 1985 of the first fully-sized shoreline prototypes near Bergen. In the following years, most of research activities remained at a theoretical level, until the European Commission included, in the early 1990s, wave resources into the common framework on renew- able energies and the International Energy Agency established the first Agreement on Ocean Energy Systems, to support research through international co-operations and information exchanges. Following the growing interest in harnessing wave energy, a variety of theoretical works on hydrodynamics of wave energy converters ([56,28,57,47], among others) and tech- nical reports ([51,54] among others), providing invaluable information about state-of-art and the most promising technolo- gies, have been provided by researchers and international institutions. In the same years, several efforts were also undertaken to design Power Take-Off units capable of efficiently converting mechanical into electrical power and properly controlling the device motion, to increase relevant performances in harsh weather conditions and decrease wave energy http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijome.2017.03.005 2214-1669/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: vincenzo.piscopo@uniparthenope.it (V. Piscopo), vincenzo.piscopo@uniparthenope.it (G. Benassai), renata.dellamorte@uniparthenope. it (R. Della Morte), antonio.scamardella@uniparthenope.it (A. Scamardella). International Journal of Marine Energy 18 (2017) 15–29 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Marine Energy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijome