The impact of wave energy farms in the shoreline wave climate: Portuguese pilot zone case study using Pelamis energy wave devices

Artur Palha, Lourenço Mendes, Conceição Juana Fortes, Ana Brito-Melo and António Sarmento

Renewable Energy, 2010, vol. 35, issue 1, 62-77

Abstract: This paper describes the study of the impact of energy absorption by wave farms on the nearshore wave climate and, in special, the influence of the incident wave conditions and the number and position of the wave farms, on the nearshore wave characteristics is studied and discussed. The study was applied to the maritime zone at the West coast off Portugal, namely in front of São Pedro de Moel, where it is foreseen the deployment of offshore wave energy prototypes and farms between the 30m and 90m bathymetric lines, with an area of 320Km2. In this study the REFDIF model was adapted in order to model the energy extraction by wave farms. Three different sinusoidal incident wave conditions were considered. Five different wave farm configurations, varying the position of the wave farm, its number and the width of the navigation channels at each wave farm were analysed. The results for each configuration in terms of the change of the wave characteristics (wave height and wave direction) at the nearshore are presented, compared and discussed for three representative wave conditions.

Keywords: Wave energy extraction; Portuguese Pilot Zone; Numerical modeling waver farm; Environmental impact; Wave climate; Pelamis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (40)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148109002687
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:35:y:2010:i:1:p:62-77

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2009.05.025

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().