Energy standards

The IEC, the global body for electrical energy standards, is recruiting experts from around the world to develop international standards for wave and tidal energy technology that will help establish the renewable energy sources as a competitive form of electrical energy production.

Tidal or ocean energy devices are either floating or fixed and, to generate electrical energy, they tend either to oscillate or to rotate. Research on the technology started in Japan in the 1940s. While there has been limited use since the 1970s, functioning units have been in use in various countries since the 1990s, mostly as prototypes.

It is expected that the international standards produced by the new IEC Technical Committee on Marine Energy: Wave and Tidal Energy Converters will support the IEA’s efforts to recommend best practices for the effective network and integration of electricity from wave and tidal energy devices.

Standards that will be developed will cover the performance of tidal and wave energy converters, how these converters will plug into electricity grid systems, and how they should be tested.