energies Article Bringing Structure to the Wave Energy Innovation Process with the Development of a Techno-Economic Tool Owain Roberts 1, *, Jillian Catherine Henderson 1, * , Anna Garcia-Teruel 2 , Donald R. Noble 2 , Inès Tunga 3 , Jonathan Hodges 1 , Henry Jeffrey 2 and Tim Hurst 1   Citation: Roberts, O.; Henderson, J.C.; Garcia-Teruel, A.; Noble, D.R.; Tunga, I.; Hodges, J.; Jeffrey, H.; Hurst, T. Bringing Structure to the Wave Energy Innovation Process with the Development of a Techno-Economic Tool. Energies 2021, 14, 8201. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14248201 Academic Editor: Ryan Coe Received: 11 October 2021 Accepted: 1 December 2021 Published: 7 December 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Wave Energy Scotland, An Lochran, 10 Inverness Campus, Inverness IV2 5NA, UK; jonathan.hodges@waveenergyscotland.co.uk (J.H.); tim.hurst@waveenergyscotland.co.uk (T.H.) 2 School of Engineering, Institute for Energy Systems, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3DW, UK; A.Garcia-Teruel@ed.ac.uk (A.G.-T.); D.Noble@ed.ac.uk (D.R.N.); Henry.Jeffrey@ed.ac.uk (H.J.) 3 Infrastructure & Engineering, Energy Systems Catapult, Birmingham B4 6BS, UK; ines.tunga@es.catapult.org.uk * Correspondence: owain.roberts@sse.com (O.R.); jillian.henderson@waveenergyscotland.co.uk (J.C.H.) Abstract: Current wave energy development initiatives assume that available designs have the potential for success through continuous learning and innovation-based cost reduction. However, this may not be the case, and potential winning technologies may have been overlooked. The scenario creation tool presented in this paper provides a structured method for the earliest stages of design in technology development. The core function of the scenario creation tool is to generate and rank scenarios of potential Wave Energy Converter (WEC) attributes and inform the user on the areas of the parameter space that are most likely to yield commercial success. This techno-economic tool uses a structured innovation approach to identify commercially attractive and technically achievable scenarios, with a scoring system based on their power performance and costs. This is done by leveraging performance and cost data from state-of-the-art wave energy converters and identifying theoretical limits to define thresholds. As a result, a list of scored solutions is obtained depending on resource level, wave energy converter hull shape, size, material, degree of freedom for power extraction, and efficiency. This scenario creation tool can be used to support private and public investors to inform strategy for future funding calls, and technology developers and researchers in identifying new avenues of innovation. Keywords: wave energy; structured innovation; scenario creation; technical achievability; commer- cial attractiveness 1. Introduction Wave energy has long been recognised as having the potential to significantly con- tribute to global energy transition as an abundant and renewable energy source [1]. How- ever, it is challenging to develop commercially viable devices that harness energy from ocean waves. These devices must be fully functional and cost-effective to deploy, and at the same time, be able to withstand extreme environmental conditions, capture wave energy efficiently in various sea conditions, and be easy to deploy, recover and maintain. Hence, there is an urgent need for the technology to become cost competitive with more traditional energy sources if it is to be included in the energy mix. Radical innovation at the earliest stages of technology design can enable a step-change in cost reduction of wave energy technology [2]. However, there are many competing wave energy converter (WEC) designs [3]. Conse- quently, initiatives have been launched that aim to achieve design consensus and accelerate development by providing structure to the innovation process in order to enable the step change in cost. An example of this is the Wave Energy Prize competition in 2016, an 18-month public design, build and test competition sponsored by the U.S. Department Energies 2021, 14, 8201. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14248201 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/energies