Abstract
The inherently advantageous geographical location of East and Southeast Asia provides a great potential for the development of diverse ocean energy technologies along its densely populated coastlines. This review paper focuses on the flexibility and feasibility of emerging ocean energy technologies in this region, including wave, tidal and ocean-current energy converters, floating photovoltaics, and offshore wind-turbines. Recent research on wave energy in the region has achieved advancements such as modifying oscillating water columns to exchange higher pneumatic energy, reshaping oscillating devices to capture more kinetic energy, and improving overtopping converters to absorb more incident waves. Regarding tidal energy, the paper reviews barrage-based and stream-based turbines and investigates the efficiency improvement, flexibility enhancement and adaptation to the unique regional features. Regarding ocean current energy, research on low-velocity turbines and optimized energy storage systems has made their application in the region more competitive. In addition, offshore deployments of floating photovoltaics have recently drawn the sector's attention and are beginning to emerge in the region, although their robustness against extreme weather and wave conditions should be addressed. Furthermore, compared to other ocean technologies, offshore wind technologies have attracted the most investment in the region. Due to the fluctuation of wind-energy generation, enhancing the energy flexibility to increase its grid penetration has become a recent focus in both the academic and industrial communities. However, despite the good research and demonstrations, most of the abovementioned ocean technologies still encounter considerable techno-economic and techno-environmental challenges that limit their competitiveness in the East and Southeast Asian markets.