Offshore oil platforms operate with independent electrical systems using gas turbines to generate their own electricity. However, gas turbines operate very inefficiently under the variable offshore conditions, increasing fuel costs and air pollutant emissions. This paper focused on investigating the feasibility of implementing a hybrid electricity supply system for offshore oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, both for the United States and Mexico Exclusive Economic Zones. Geographic Information Systems methodologies were used to analyze the data from various sources. Three different scenarios were studied, including wind power only, wave power only, and wind and wave power combined. The results showed that all the offshore locations were within accepted feasible distance to the coast for connecting to the onshore grid. Most of the locations had acceptable power levels of either wind or wave energy while the combination of both resources can improve the overall energy harvesting efficiency and reduce the variability in a significant number of locations. The proposed methodology can be applied for specific locations with finer spatial and time resolution, which will allow stakeholders to improve the decision making process, generate important savings on the normal operation, reduce pollution, and potentially increase income by selling surplus energy from renewable sources.

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Although theoretical available wave energy is higher than most of ocean energy sources, the commercial utilization of wave energy is much slower than other ocean energy sources. The difficulty of integration with the electrical grid system and the challenges of the installation, operation and maintenance of large energy generation and transmission systems are the major reasons. Even though there are successfully tested models of wave energy converters, the fact that wave energy is directly affected by wave height and wave period makes the actual wave energy output with high variation and difficult to be predicted. And most of the previous studies on wave energy and its utilization have focused on the large scale energy production that can be integrated into a power grid system. In this paper, the authors identify and discuss stand-alone wave energy converter systems and facilities that are not connected to the electricity grid with focus on small scale wave energy systems as potential source of energy. For the proper identification, qualification and quantification of wave energy resource potential, wave properties such as wave height and period need to be characterized. This is used to properly determine and predict the probability of the occurrence of these wave properties at particular locations, which enables the choice of product design, installation, operation and maintenance to effectively capture wave energy. Meanwhile, the present technologies available for wave energy converters can be limited by location (offshore, nearshore or shoreline). Therefore, the potential applications of small scale stand-alone wave energy converter are influenced by the demand, location of the need and the appropriate technology to meet the identified needs. The paper discusses the identification of wave energy resource potentials, the location and appropriate technology suitable for small scale wave energy converter. Two simplified wave energy converter designs are created and simulated under real wave condition in order to estimate the energy production of each design.