Pre-feasibility assessment for identifying locations of new offshore wind projects in the Colombian Caribbean.

The offshore wind energy sector is showing a growing interest because the increment of global energy demand and the commitment to reduce the CO2 emissions. The need to identify new wind offshore areas have motivated the development of methods where several quantitative and qualitative factors are considered. Then, this study reviewed these factors to establish a priority order to know when they could be analyzed within 3 main stages (pre-feasibility, feasibility and final decision). As a result, this research organized tha main factors in the 3 stages and performed a pre-feasibility analysis for assessing potential offshore areas considering technical-environmental features such as spatial classification, temporal variability (magnitude and direction) and geographical restrictions. The Colombian Caribbean coast was selected as study case, and 3 areas were identified according to their wind climate variability, in which 10 locations showed high potential for developing offshore wind projects. The north and central zone of the Colombian Caribbean coast were identified as the most suitable areas with mean annual wind-speed over 10 m/s with low magnitude and direction variability, two factors considered extremely important for the wind power generation

Experimental investigation of motion behavior in irregular wave and site selection analysis of a hybrid offshore renewable power station for Egypt

The majority of the population living in coastal remote areas does not have access to energy sources in Egypt. Development of living standards in such areas without infrastructure can be achieved through floating power stations. Novel cylindrical power station powered by hybrid marine renewable resources is proposed to overcome energy shortage in such areas. The objective of the present study is to experimentally evaluate the motion behaviour of the proposed concept in different load conditions for critical environmental loads in order to obtain model characteristic data which is critical in the structure's verification and other post-analysis study. Furthermore, selecting suitable deployment site for the proposed concept was performed based on integrated geographical information systems and multi-criteria decision model considering the potential of renewable sources in Egypt. The experimental test was conducted using 1:100 model-scale in irregular wave which is a more realistic condition in order to check the operational safety among critical conditions. The site selection analysis show that Marsa Alam area has the highest priority to place the proposed concept. Moreover, the time-domain analysis results indicate that the proposed concept can safely operate in the selected deployment area subjected to environmental loads