World energy demand is increasing at an alarming rate and producing electricity from alternative or renewable energy sources is becoming necessary. There are many technologies to extract electric energy from sea waves such as: the oscillating water column, the point absorber, the overtopping...

The objective of this work is to investigate how the impact of a wave farm on the nearshore wave conditions depends on its location and, more specifically, its distance to the coast. For this purpose eight case studies in an area with a very substantial wave resource are considered; they encompass...

Justifying continued development and large-scale deployment of Wave Energy Converters (WECs) requires quantification of the potential resource. Currently, estimates are available for individual countries or, at low accuracy, for global resource. Additionally, existing estimates do not provide...

Development of ocean wave energy requires general knowledge of the wave climate as well as reliable estimates of the available power. A WAVEWATCH III hindcast study with surface winds from the Final Global Tropospheric Analysis (FNL) provides 10 years of spectral wave data for a thorough...

A case study of the development of an overall resource assessment for the Wave Hub site in the southwest UK is presented. Wave Hub is one of the earliest large-scale wave farms planned. Several resource assessment studies have been performed for the site, but the published results are high-level...

The flow through the air turbine of an oscillating water column (OWC) wave energy converter is reciprocating and is random and highly variable. It is not surprising that the time-averaged efficiency of the air turbine is substantially lower than that of a conventional turbine working in nearly...

Hawaii's access to the ocean and remoteness from fuel supplies has sparked an interest in ocean waves as a potential resource to meet the increasing demand for sustainable energy. The wave resources include swells from distant storms and year-round seas generated by trade winds passing through...

Lanzarote (Canary Islands, Spain) is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve (since 1993) located in the Atlantic Ocean. The island is aiming to change its energy production model in order to reduce its dependence on external, fossil-fuel-based energy sources. The local authorities hope to develop an energy...

Menorca (Balearic Islands) only covers 2% of its electricity needs with renewable energy sources, which is far below the European Union's objective of obtaining 20% of its energy from these sources. This study analyses the island's wave energy resources using a 17-year series of data obtained...

The substantial wave energy resource of the US Pacific Northwest (i.e. off the coasts of Washington, Oregon and N. California) is assessed and characterized. Archived spectral records from ten wave measurement buoys operated and maintained by the National Data Buoy Center and the Coastal Data...