10-year high resolution study of wind, sea waves and wave energy assessment in the Greek offshore areas

Nowadays, renewable energy resources are one of the top priority issues for the environmental and political community. In particular, wind and wave energy are two of the most promising solutions, with great potential from research and technological point of view. In this work, an integrated high resolution platform, consisting of state-of-the-art wind-wave numerical models, has been utilized and produced a 10-year database containing all the relevant environmental parameters for a detailed resource assessment over the Greek seas. The results of the atmospheric and sea wave numerical models concerning the environmental parameters that directly affect the wave energy potential were evaluated. High resolution maps for the coastal and offshore areas of Greece present sea wave and wind climatological characteristics, as well as the relevant distribution of the wave energy potential. A number of statistical indices have been employed for analyzing the output of the models, including the potential impact of extreme values and the corresponding distribution of the above parameters, which optimally describe the spatial and temporal analysis of the wave power potential over the area of interest. It is shown that the regions with increased wave energy potential are mainly the western and southern seas of Greece, which are usually exposed to swell from central and south Mediterranean Sea. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.