Wave Energy Assessment in the South Aquitaine Nearshore Zone from a 44-Year Hindcast

Abstract

Wave resource assessment is the first step toward the installation of a wave energy converter (WEC). To support initiatives for wave energy development in the southwest of France, a coastal wave database is built from a 44-year hindcast simulation with the spectral wave model SWAN (Simulating WAve Nearshore) run on a high-resolution unstructured grid. The simulation includes shallow-water processes such as refraction, shoaling, and breaking. The model is validated against a five-year coastal wave buoy recording. The study shows that most of the resource is provided by sea states with wave heights ranging from 2 to 5 m, with wave periods from 10 and 15 s, and coming from a very narrow angular sector. The long hindcast duration and the refined unstructured grid used for the simulation allow assessment of the spatiotemporal distribution of wave energy across the coastal area. On the one hand, large longshore variations of the resource caused by steep bathymetric gradients such as the Capbreton submarine canyon are underlined. On the other hand, the study highlights that no specific long-term trend can be extracted regarding the coastal wave energy resource evolution. The provided downscaled local wave resource information may be used to optimize the location and design of a future WEC that could be deployed in the region.