Wave energy conversion is a renewable energy technology with a promising potential. Although it has been developed for more than 200 years, the technology is still far from mature. The survivability in extreme weather conditions is a key parameter halting its development. We present here results from two weeks of measurement with a force measurement buoy deployed at Uppsala University’s test site for wave energy research at the west coast of Sweden. The collected data have been used to investigate the reliability for two typical numerical wave energy converter models: one low fidelity model based on linear wave theory and one high fidelity Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes model. The line force data is also analysed by extreme value theory using the peak-over-threshold method to study the statistical distribution of extreme forces and to predict the return period. The high fidelity model shows rather good agreement for the smaller waves, but overestimates the forces for larger waves, which can be attributed to uncertainties related to field measurements and numerical modelling uncertainties. The peak-over-threshold method gives a rather satisfying result for this data set. A significant deviation is observed in the measured force for sea states with the same significant wave height. This indicates that it will be difficult to calculate the force based on the significant wave height only, which points out the importance of more offshore experiments. © 2023 by the authors.