Wave energy resource assessment in Menorca (Spain)

Wave Energy Assessment and Performance Estimation of State of the Art Wave Energy Converters in Italian Hotspots

“…The results of this study indicate that the Pelamis is appropriate for the highest energetic sites, while the Wavestar is suitable for all sites. The capacity factor of the Pelamis, the Wave Dragon and the AquaBuoy were obtained by Aoun et al [40] on the Lebanon coast, Dunnet and Wallace [41] on the east coast of Canada, Bozzi et al [38] on the Italian coast and Sierra et al [18] on Menorca. These studies pointed out that for the Lebanon coast the capacity factors of all the three WECs is extremely low (around 5%).…”

“…Traditionally, the assessment of the wave energy has been carried out for offshore deep water wave data [1,[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19], while, more recently, coastal areas have been investigated in order to locate hotspots [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. At the oceanic global scale, the richest wave power areas are between 40 • and 60 • latitude of both hemispheres [10].…”

“…In 2013, Liberti et al [17] assessed the wave power through numerical simulation hindcasting of the whole Mediterranean Sea for the period 2001-2010, and their results show that the most energetic area is in the Western Mediterranean between the Balearic Islands and the western coast of Sardinia where it reaches values above 15 kW/m. Sierra et al in 2014 [18] studied the wave energy resources around Menorca Island (Mediterranean Sea) finding yearly mean wave power close to 8.9 kW/m. In 2016, Besio et al [19] followed the line opened by Liberti et al [17] but increased the resolution of the atmospheric forcing from 1 • /4 • to 1 • /10 • , extending the range of the numerical simulation from 10 to 35 years (from 1 January 1979 to 31 December 2013) and decreasing the time step for the recording of wave characteristics to 1 h instead of 3 h. The Besio et al [19] results are similar to those obtained by Liberti et al [17].…”

Offshore wave potential of the Mediterranean Sea

“…The wave energy resource alone has the potential to satisfy a substantial part of the electricity demand of several European countries. Particularly, some of the major advantages of wave energy are: i) the great extent of power concentrated in the motion of waves, ii) the independence from occupying large land masses and the relative independence of the operation of wave energy converters from local weather conditions, iii) the mild impacts on the marine flora and fauna [1]; to this respect, many EU and national programs encourage the R&D of such technologies and it is expected that this exploitation will have a significant growth in the next decades, see for example [2]- [4]. Albeit the up-to-date wave energy technology exhibits a wide variety of systems at different stages of development, even near the commercial stage, the progress and exploitation of wave energy has been hindered up to now due to the high costs for each development stage (i.e., testing, construction, deployment, maintenance) of relevant devices.…”

Identifying the Optimal Offshore Areas for Wave Energy Converter Deployments in Taiwanese Waters Based on 12-Year Model Hindcasts

“…The use of numerical models to assess ocean wave power has been widely adopted on both regional [8][9][10][11] and global scales [12][13][14][15] and has been implemented for several islands, including the Canary Islands, Madeira, and the Azores in the Atlantic Ocean [16][17][18][19], Hawaii and Taiwan in the Pacific Ocean [20][21][22][23], Fuerte Island in the Caribbean Sea [24], and Sardinia and Menorca in the Mediterranean Sea [25][26][27].…”