Wave Energy Analysis at Two Coastal Locations of the Aegean Sea Using a High-Resolution Spectral Wave Model

Small, off-grid and isolated Greek islands are still confronted with challenges related to the high cost of energy, and the stability of electricity supply. Furthermore, on islands where autonomous energy power plants already exist, the energy production is still heavily dependent on fossil fuels. In the frame of the Greek project NISOS, several studies have been already performed aiming at the development of expertise and methodology for the decarbonization of Antikythera and Halki islands. Given that small islands are often characterized by favorable conditions for the installation of wave energy converters (WEC), one of the examined offshore renewable sources is wave energy. In this work, a detailed analysis of the annual wave energy production nearshore at two Aegean islands is performed. The numerical spectral Wave Module (SW) of the Danish Hydraulic Institute (DHI) has been implemented in order to derive the nearshore wave conditions based on the most energetic offshore locations. Taking into consideration locations with less than 100 m water depth, 9 and 6 nearshore locations for Halki and Antikythera respectively are selected and the performance of 9 different WECs is evaluated. For the estimation of the mean annual energy production 2 downscaled models among the different examined WECs are also considered across all the potential installation nearshore sites. From the numerical results, it is evident that the highest energy production is encountered nearshore Antikythera Isl. Considering the annual energy demands of the examined islands, Wave Dragon and Atargis are the WECs with the best performance in the majority of the potential installation sites. From the downscaled models, WaveDragon in Antikythera is capable to meet the annual energy demand in any of the potential nearshore installation sites.