The impact of sea surface currents to the estimation and modeling of wave energy potential over an area of increased economic interest, the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, is investigated in this work. High-resolution atmospheric, wave, and circulation models, the latter downscaled from the regional Mediterranean Forecasting System (MFS) of the Copernicus marine service (former MyOcean regional MFS system), are utilized towards this goal. The modeled data are analyzed by means of a variety of statistical tools measuring the potential changes not only in the main wave characteristics, but also in the general distribution of the wave energy and the wave parameters that mainly affect it, when using sea surface currents as a forcing to the wave models. The obtained results prove that the impact of the sea surface currents is quite significant in wave energy-related modeling, as well as temporally and spatially dependent. These facts are revealing the necessity of the utilization of the sea surface currents characteristics in renewable energy studies in conjunction with their meteo-ocean forecasting counterparts.
The aim of this work is to study different approaches for the estimation of the energy potential of sea waves. To this end, numerical models and remote sensing, especially satellites, are utilised for the regions of North Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. In particular, two methods are compared: one based on the full wave spectrum and a second utilising simplified formulas based on specific wave parameters and certain approximations. Moreover, an attempt for a qualitative assessment of the wave model WAM over areas of different wave climatology is made by the comparison of relevant wave spectra. The main outcomes of this work show that simplified calculation approaches of wave energy potential overestimate the energy rate of even 10% on average, varying in the cases of shallow or deep waters. Moreover, the performance of the wave model is satisfactory resulting to small statistical errors in the calculation of wave characteristics, a fact that proves the suitability of WAM model for reliable wave energy assessment.
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