Abstract
Wave energy resource assessment is crucial for the development of the marine renewable industry. High-frequency radars (HF radars) have been demonstrated to be a useful wave measuring tool. Therefore, in this work, we evaluated the accuracy of two CODAR Seasonde HF radars for describing the wave energy resource of two offshore areas in the west Galician coast, Spain (Vilán and Silleiro capes). The resulting wave characterization was used to estimate the electricity production of two wave energy converters. Results were validated against wave data from two buoys and two numerical models (SIMAR, (Marine Simulation) and WaveWatch III). The statistical validation revealed that the radar of Silleiro cape significantly overestimates the wave power, mainly due to a large overestimation of the wave energy period. The effect of the radars’ data loss during low wave energy periods on the mean wave energy is partially compensated with the overestimation of wave height and energy period. The theoretical electrical energy production of the wave energy converters was also affected by these differences. Energy period estimation was found to be highly conditioned to the unimodal interpretation of the wave spectrum, and it is expected that new releases of the radar software will be able to characterize different sea states independently.
Highlights
The development of renewable energies is one of the key factors in the fight against greenhouse gas emissions, reduction in waste, and for promoting a diverse and distributed energy mix
Wave energy is harnessed by wave energy converters (WECs), which currently are mostly engineering projects and prototypes [4,8,9], with a particular electricity production rate depending on wave quantity and qualitative characteristics [10]
the energy period (Te), wave power and wave energy were validated with the paired clean data for each data source
Summary
The development of renewable energies is one of the key factors in the fight against greenhouse gas emissions, reduction in waste, and for promoting a diverse and distributed energy mix. The least widespread, but with great potential, are the marine renewable energies, among which offshore wind energy is the most developed technology, followed by tidal and wave energy [1]. Wave energy offers the greatest potential for exploitation, mainly due to its spatial availability and low needs of investment in infrastructure [1,2], but it is the most complicated to assess [3]. A gross estimate of the available wave energy may not represent the production of a WEC [11,12,13,14]
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