EVALUATION OF THE COASTAL INFLUENCE OF A GENERIC WAVE FARM OPERATING IN THE ROMANIAN NEARSHORE

The main objective of the present work is to evaluate the coastal impact of a generic wave farm operating in the Romanian nearshore. The study focuses mainly on two target areas, the first is located in the vicinity of the Saint George arm of the Danube and the second is a coastal sector north of Mamaia. At the same time, the expected electric power for various types of wave energy converters (including Pelamis, Wave Dragon, Archimedes Wave Swing and Aqua Buoy) was also estimated. In order to evaluate the local and the coastal impact of the wave energy farm operating in the two target areas, the ISSM computational framework was considered. This is an easily operable tool that has been designed to simulate waves and nearshore currents. The modelling system is composed of a MATLAB GUI in the foreground, which directs the integration of the SWAN wave model with a 1D surf model in the background. A complete overview of the wave field variations was obtained by gradually adjusting the energy absorbing property of the farm, from a zero absorption (no wave farm) to a total absorption scenario which may be related to a large marine project with wave energy systems distributed on multiple lines.