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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Energy Res.
Sec. Wave and Tidal Energy
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2024.1454275
This article is part of the Research Topic Wave and Hydrokinetic Energies View all articles

Wave energy assessment and wave converters applicability at the Pacific coast of Central America

Provisionally accepted
Manuel Corrales-Gonzalez Manuel Corrales-Gonzalez 1*George Lavidas George Lavidas 2Andrea Lira Loarca Andrea Lira Loarca 1Giovanni Besio Giovanni Besio 1
  • 1 Department of Civil, Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Polytechnic School, University of Genoa, Genova, Italy
  • 2 Department of Hydraulic Engineering, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Nowadays, numerous governments have instituted diverse regulatory frameworks aimed at fostering the assimilation of sustainable energy sources characterized by reduced environmental footprints. Solar, wind, geothermal, and ocean energies were subject to extensive scrutiny, owing to their ecological merits. However, these sources exhibit pronounced temporal fluctuations. Notably, ocean dynamics offer vast energy reservoirs, wherein oceanic waves contain relevant energy amount. In the Central American Pacific context, the exploration of wave energy resources is currently underway. Accurate numerical wave models are required for applied studies such as those oriented to the estimation of exploitable wave power, and even more so in the Central American region of the Pacific Ocean where existing numerical models simulations have so far relied on coarse resolution and limited validation field data. This work presents a high resolution unstructured wave hindcast over the Central American Pacific region, implemented by means of the third-generation spectral wave model WavewatchIII over the period comprised between 1979 and 2021. Results of the significant wave height have been bias-corrected on the basis of satellite information spanning 2005 to 2015, and further validation was done by using wave buoy and Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler records located in the nearshore region of the Central America Pacific coast. After correction and validation of the wave hindcast, we employed the dataset for the evaluation and assessment of wave energy and its possible exploitation by means of different wave energy converters. This evaluation addressed the imperative of diversifying the energy portfolio within the Exclusive Economic Zones of Guatemala,

    Keywords: Pacific Ocean, Wave climate, WaveWatchIII, Marine renewable energy, WEC, capacity factor, SIWED

    Received: 24 Jun 2024; Accepted: 26 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Corrales-Gonzalez, Lavidas, Lira Loarca and Besio. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Manuel Corrales-Gonzalez, Department of Civil, Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Polytechnic School, University of Genoa, Genova, Italy

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.