Assessment of Wave Energy Converter Performance with Satellite Data

Recent advances in satellite measurements make satellites suitable candidates for monitoring the ocean environment, especially in the case of offshore wave resources. In this context, the present work aims to evaluate the accuracy of the wave dataset provided by the European Space Agency’s Sea State Climate Change Initiative (or CCI-SS) project, in order to establish its viability to be used for renewable energy applications in general and those associated with some European locations in particular. Seventeen years of ERA5 data (2002–2018) are also considered for comparison with the satellite measurements. The first step is to derive the wave periods corresponding to the significant wave heights provided by the satellite from the ERA5 data by establishing a quadratic relationship between the significant wave height (Hs) and the wave period (Te). As a next step, the local wave conditions are expressed in terms of wave power distribution, also considering the performance of three wave energy generators with nominal power ranging from 250 to 3619 kW. By comparing with ERA5 data, it was observed that the CCI-SS dataset generally overestimates the wave energy for the sites located in the oceanic environment, also indicating much higher values for the converters with a rated power that does not exceed 1000 kW.