PUBLIC LECTURE: UWA Albany Public Lecture

There is enough energy to power about 1 billion homes from the waves that hit all coasts around the world every day. Not all of it can be practically harnessed, but even a small proportion would mean a lot for the security of our energy supply. Compared to solar and wind, wave energy has not had much success. For one thing, harnessing wave energy is more challenging than solar or wind because of the medium and the environment we are working with, but also the physics behind wave energy absorption is not widely understood. This lecture will give an overview of the history of wave energy where we will look at some examples of wave energy devices that have been proposed throughout history. We will also try to learn some fundamentals of wave energy absorption, address some common misconceptions, and highlight some open questions that remain to be answered. Adi Kurniawan grew up in a small town in East Java, Indonesia. At the age of 17, he received a scholarship to pursue an engineering degree in Singapore. Never had he imagined that this would lead him to a journey across different countries: Norway, UK, Denmark, and now Australia. Adi joined the newly established Wave Energy Research Centre at UWA Albany in September 2019 as a research fellow. His research covers aspects of wave-structure interactions, wave energy conversion, and multi-objective optimisation. Adi has about 10 years of research experience in wave energy. He has numerically modelled various wave energy converters and is deeply interested in how geometry and motion influence wave absorption. He has recently co-authored a second edition textbook on wave energy with Professor Johannes Falnes, who is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of wave energy research.