A question we often hear asked is 'Why isn't wave energy commercial yet? Is there something fundamentally wrong with it?' The question is both really interesting, and a pain to get asked: there is no simple answer, everyone has a different take on this, and often the person asking just wants a simple thumbs up or down.
Wind energy can be a useful analogy, especially for those of us ancient enough to have watched as it 'grew up', and to remember the same types of doubts directed at it. There are several techno-economic ideas (see Glossary for definitions) that are familiar when applied to wind energy, which we can then use as lenses for looking closer at wave energy.
