SPOTLIGHT ON IRELAND
MERGING MODELS AND SATELLITES FOR MORE ACCURATE WAVE HINDCASTS
TechWorks Marine is well known in the marine renewable sphere for its expertise in delivering in-situ wave and tidal resource assessment and monitoring. Their latest offering for those interested in wave resources uses satellite data and numerical modelling to produce global, long-term wave statistics to complement our in situ measurements.
RESOURCE ASSESSMENT SURVEYS
Over the last decade TechWorks Marine has been working with a number of agencies, developers and utilities carrying out resource assessment surveys at various sites across Europe. At the Raz De Blanchard site in France, TechWorks has deployed numerous ADCP (Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler) seabed frames for both OpenHydro and Engie/Futures Energies to gather high precision current and wave information, for both resource assessment and also turbine characterisation. Similar surveys were conducted in the Channel Islands, Northern Ireland, Ireland and Scotland for a range of clients ranging from Tocardo BV and DP Energy to SEAI (The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland). Over the last decade the company has become a leader in marine renewable energy resource assessment, and have developed methodologies to ensure quality data return.
INTERNATIONAL BEST PRACTICE
TechWorks Marine are not just aware of international best practice, they have written the book on it as well as contributing to the IEC Technical Committee 114 – Marine Energy since 2011. They also played an active role in the development of the Technical Standards for both wave and tidal resource assessment and continue
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to monitor developments for the IEC committee to incorporate updates from our experience in a still-developing field.
LATEST DEVELOPMENT
The company’s latest development in the marine resource assessment sector combines satellite wave data from the last twenty years with the most up to date wave model and wind fields to create a global wave database. Available since 1993, satellite altimeter measurements have become increasingly important as global observations of sea state. Currently available wave databases do not include these data at the modelling stage, even though they increase the accuracy of the model output. During a project funded by the European Space Agency to optimise the use of satellite data in the marine renewable sector, an assimilation scheme for satellite altimetry data was developed for input to the WAVEWATCH III model.
www.wavetidalenergynetwork.co.uk
GENERATION OF GLOBAL WAVE STATISTICS
Use of the Irish Centre for High-End Computing parallel processing system allowed the generation of global wave statistics from this model, along with high resolution spectral wave data around Europe. The wave climate at a particular location, such as its variation with the seasons and from year to year have been calculated from this database. The hindcast was developed for marine renewable energy resource assessment applications and allows developers rapid online access to accurate wave statistics for sites of interest.
The database is due for release later in 2017.
TechWorks Marine
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