Assessment of potential locations for OWC instalation at the portuguese coast

Abstract

This work aims to determine the exploitable wave energy resource at six potential sites, located in the Azores, Madeira and Sines. For that purpose, the third-generation wave model SWAN is used to estimate the sea-wave conditions over the last 40 years. Boundary conditions of the sea states and wind fields are provided by the climate reanalysis datasets ERA5. Using those results as inputs to the SWAN model, the sea-states were propagated shoreward, in order to estimate and analyse the wave conditions in the regions of interest. By combining the average energy flux per unit-length of wave front and the probability of occurrence of each sea state, the average exploitable annual energy per unit length of wave crest can be computed. The variability of this energy flux is analysed since it is of fundamental importance for the efficiency of the Wave Energy Converters (WEC).