Defining the Long-Term Wave Resource at Wave Hub: The Role of Measurements and Models

Abstract

Wave measurements made on the site of a potential wave energy project can be of high value to developers. Such data can be used to define both long-term and short-term wave energy resources available to devices as well as the optimal operations and maintenance strategy which should be employed for the project. All three of these applications are addressed in an ongoing study commissioned by the npower Juice Fund for the Wave Hub project which is planned off the South West coast of England. The aim of this work is to extract best value from the historical and future wave measurements from the project site. The programme of this project is outlined here with a technical description of activity in the three parallel strands of the study; wave resource assessment, short-term forecasting and O&M modelling. The focus of this paper is on a key aspect of the ongoing work programme - that relates to the use of measured and modelled wave data to derive a prediction of the long-term wave climate at the Wave Hub site. In particular, various candidate methodologies for correlating short-term measured wave data and long-term modelled data are explored in the context of a Measure-Correlate-Predict (MCP) analysis. This work has also included consideration of the inter-annual variability of wave resource in order to examine the uncertainty associated with assuming that a finite historical reference period is representative of the long-term wave climate.