Wave energy is one of the most concentrated ocean renewable energy resources. Although wave energy has been studied extensively for more than four decades, there is no large commercial installation for wave energy production or a consensus framework on how to exploit this resource. Wave energy is a complex resource that directly depends on two meteorological parameters, which produced significant fluctuations of wave energy in both temporal and spatial criteria. This paper presents a new concept called Energy Event, to analyze meteorological data generated by WaveWatch III over 36 years in the U.S. to characterize and assess wave energy behavior using the peak-over-threshold methodology. This methodology used extreme statistics, segmented the wave energy with different thresholds, and assessed wave energy production on a temporal and spatial framework. Three areas were studied in this paper, including the Gulf of Mexico, the East and West U.S. Coasts. The results indicated that wave energy behaved as a two-state energy system with each state having independent characteristics. The main difference among the three studied areas was the constant baseline of wave power density, with the West Coast having the highest constant baseline and the Gulf of Mexico having the lowest baseline. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.