European wave energy map
The first ever European wave energy map has been completed as a result of the WERATLAS (Wave Energy Resource Atlas) project, a research project funded under the JOULE component of the Community's JOULE/THERMIE programme in the field of Non-nuclear Energy. The first stage of the research carried out under this project involved characterizing wave energy resources at offshore reference sites, using wave estimates produced by a numerical wind-wave model. The model results were verified against data measured at the sites and remotely sensed by satellites. The advantage of such remote sensing is that it is unaffected by weather conditions. In the second stage of the research, promising nearshore or shoreline sites are to be quantified using models fed with reference data from stage one. The Wave Energy Resource Atlas produced was plotted for five overlapping regions in the area 50W to 45E and 20N to 73N. Some 87 model grid points and busy locations were selected in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic for the first edition of the atlas. The resulting data includes wave height, period and power occurrence distribution, and the directional distribution of their power levels, in addition to mean values and variability of wave height and power. Results for 41 Atlantic sites have been particularly revealing. Wave power levels at seven points around the Azores, where an EU team is currently building a prototype generator, averaged, over the course of a year, between 37 and 60 MW per km of energy for a single grid point, with peaks in winter of 125 MW/km and 15MW/km in summer. Off the coast of Portugal, means of around 80 MW/km were found in winter, with Vigo in Spain proving the most promising potential site for wave energy of the Iberian sites measured. Off Ireland and Scotland, winter means reached over 150 MW/km, with 130 MW/km off Iceland. When one considers that wave speeds can reach 30 or 40 km per hour at the shoreline, and that it should be possible to string a whole series of water turbines together over a considerable distance, it is not difficult to see how wave energy could be used to provide huge amounts of immediately available electrical energy. The electronic atlas developed in WERATLAS is a user-friendly, PC-based, interactive system. Users can browse, query, transfer data, perform on-line spatial analysis and their own modelling calculations. It was designed by experts from three different disciplines - cartographers, wave modellers and statisticians - and may be easily updated.