EVALUATION OF VARIOUS WAVE ENERGY CONVERTERS IN THE BAY OF CÁDIZ

The Andalusian Agency of Energy has identified three areas of major interest for harnessing wave energy, in their plan of “Marine Energy and Energy Resources of Andalusia”. One of these areas is located on the Atlantic coast, the bay of Cádiz. Considering this initial interest, the objective of this work is to carry out an evaluation of the performance provided by various technologies of wave energy conversion in the bay of Cádiz. The data for the wave climate in the target area are obtained from the Spanish Agency Puertos del Estado. Diagrams for bivariate distributions of the sea states occurrences, defined by the significant wave height and the energy period, are shown. On this basis, the output of nine different technologies for the conversion of wave energy is assessed in the reference locations in the bay of Cádiz. According to the results obtained, it can be said that the bay of Cádiz is a suitable place for wave energy extraction

Features of the European Maritime Clusters

The paper analyses the national and regional European maritime clusters according to the sea basin division proposed by the European Union Integrated Maritime Policy: Atlantic and Arctic oceans; Baltic, Black, Mediterranean and North seas. Besides the identification of all maritime sectors by country ? be it at national and/or regional level - a statistical database is established per each and every of the above referred sea basins, in order that a comparative analysis can be developed. Also in line with Wijnolst, Jensen & Sødal (2003) that propose a maritime sector benchmarking - the ?Global Maritime Benchmarking? ? which should allow evaluating the maritime clusters evolution and strength - the paper estimates nine indicators: structural indicators (no. of clusters, no. of companies; no. of employees; no. of sectors; technological level; location); economic indicators (Gross Added Value, production; productivity; profit and rentability rates), internationalization (exports and imports, major clients and suppliers, international average prices, EU and third countries markets shares); critical mass (agglomerations and scale economies by maritime sector) and leader firms; level playing-field (free-competition, monopolistic, oligopolistic markets); innovation (major universities and R&D centers, no. patents, regional innovation systems); institutional framework (governance, connection with regional and national governments)and business networks; labour market (unemployment rate, average wages) and education (major schools and courses by different grades, training centers); and image and communication. Particular attention is attributed to the Atlantic basin strategy - the largest of all the EU Integrated Maritime Policy Basins ? where besides the Blue growth concerns the authors, develop the result of a group of interviews to experts on Blue Geopolitics and Geostrategic. The above comparison between sea basins will allow characterizing ?maritime Europe?, identifying the location of the main excellence centres and the major beneficiaries of the Integrated Maritime Policy decisions. The paper also suggest public strategies that would support clusters development ? or ?cluster enablers? ? that include, among others, the definition of an industrial policy, strengthening of demand pull sectors or the promotion of innovation, R&D and leader firms. The needed conditions in order that Europe could organise itself has a ?vast continental maritime cluster? are also under scrutiny

The 'Portuguese Range' as the Westernmost Maritime Region of Europe

Ports located in the Portuguese west coast have been collectively defined as the ?Portuguese Range?, constituting a multi-port gateway system integrated within the broader context of an already well-established traditional maritime region. The aim of this paper is to identify how the Portuguese ports have been developing and how they can establish themselves as a gateway to the Iberian Peninsula and Western Europe. In fact, Portuguese range ports, located at the extreme of rail freight corridor nº4, could greatly benefit from ?port regionalization? into bordering regions of Spain, the Madrid Community and Northern Europe, forming in this way a competitive gateway to foreland regions along the Atlantic Ocean, such as Latin America, North America, West Africa and Southern Africa. The paper first describes the current situation of Portuguese ports regarding infrastructure, superstructure and throughput, aiming at establishing its capabilities, level of activity and potential problems. Regional transport infrastructures current status, such as rail lines, inland terminals and dry ports are also reviewed, including projects currently foreseen by authorities. Main problems and bottlenecks in regional connections are identified. Main shipping lines calling in Portuguese ports, terminal operators, railway operators and 3P logistics service providers operating in Portugal are also identified. The strategies for promoting ?port regionalization? adopted by these different players in the supply chain are reviewed and analyzed, with focus on shipping lines, terminal operators, freight forwarders, port administrations and Governments. Conclusions are drawn and policy suggestions are made for further improvements in the regionalization of Portuguese ports, taken as an enhancer of economic growth

OVERVIEW AND PROSPECTS FOR DEVELOPMENT OF WAVE AND OFFSHORE WIND ENERGY

An overview of the present state of development of offshore renewable wave and wind energy is presented and future prospects are discussed. The information on some of the current wave energy systems worldwide are given as indicative of the present state of affairs. The main working principles of wave energy systems are described and the differences in terms of working principle, conversion chain, location and power take-off systems are highlighted. Some of the technology challenges are identified and the prospects of utilization of the various wave energy concepts are discussed comparing the characteristics of the devices in particular their power output. The evolution of the concepts of wind turbines with time and the main types of offshore wind turbine concepts are presented, from the shallow water fixed ones to the floating ones. The development of various numerical codes for the dynamic analysis of offshore wind turbines and the studies carried out based on the codes for hydrodynamic, aerodynamic, structural and response due to control system are presented. The present status of wind energy compared to wave energy and the role of naval architects and ocean engineers for the design and analysis of wave energy device and offshore wind turbine technology are presented and discussed

Features of the European Maritime Clusters

he paper analyses the national and regional European maritime clusters according to the sea basin division proposed by the European Union Integrated Maritime Policy: Atlantic and Arctic oceans; Baltic, Black, Mediterranean and North seas. Besides the identification of all maritime sectors by country ? be it at national and/or regional level - a statistical database is established per each and every of the above referred sea basins, in order that a comparative analysis can be developed. Also in line with Wijnolst, Jensen & Sødal (2003) that propose a maritime sector benchmarking - the ?Global Maritime Benchmarking? ? which should allow evaluating the maritime clusters evolution and strength - the paper estimates nine indicators: structural indicators (no. of clusters, no. of companies; no. of employees; no. of sectors; technological level; location); economic indicators (Gross Added Value, production; productivity; profit and rentability rates), internationalization (exports and imports, major clients and suppliers, international average prices, EU and third countries markets shares); critical mass (agglomerations and scale economies by maritime sector) and leader firms; level playing-field (free-competition, monopolistic, oligopolistic markets); innovation (major universities and R&D centers, no. patents, regional innovation systems); institutional framework (governance, connection with regional and national governments)and business networks; labour market (unemployment rate, average wages) and education (major schools and courses by different grades, training centers); and image and communication. Particular attention is attributed to the Atlantic basin strategy - the largest of all the EU Integrated Maritime Policy Basins ? where besides the Blue growth concerns the authors, develop the result of a group of interviews to experts on Blue Geopolitics and Geostrategic. The above comparison between sea basins will allow characterizing ?maritime Europe?, identifying the location of the main excellence centres and the major beneficiaries of the Integrated Maritime Policy decisions. The paper also suggest public strategies that would support clusters development ? or ?cluster enablers? ? that include, among others, the definition of an industrial policy, strengthening of demand pull sectors or the promotion of innovation, R&D and leader firms. The needed conditions in order that Europe could organise itself has a ?vast continental maritime cluster? are also under scrutiny.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Methodology to Calculate the Costs of a Floating Offshore Renewable Energy Farm

This paper establishes a general methodology to calculate the life-cycle cost of floating offshore renewable energy devices, applying it to wave energy and wind energy devices. It is accounts for the contributions of the six main phases of their life-cycle: concept definition, design and development, manufacturing, installation, exploitation and dismantling, the costs of which have been defined. Moreover, the energy produced is also taken into account to calculate the Levelized Cost of Energy of a floating offshore renewable energy farm. The methodology proposed has been applied to two renewable energy devices: a floating offshore wave energy device and a floating offshore wind energy device. Two locations have been considered: Aguçadoura and São Pedro de Moel, both in Portugal. Results indicate that the most important cost in terms of the life-cycle of a floating offshore renewable energy farm is the exploitation cost, followed by the manufacturing and the installation cost. In addition, the best area in terms of costs is the same independently of the type of floating offshore renewable energy considered: Aguçadoura. However, the results in terms of Levelized Cost of Energy are different: Aguçadoura is better when considering wave energy technology and the São Pedro de Moel region is the best option when considering floating wind energy technology. The method proposed aims to give a direct approach to calculate the main life-cycle cost of a floating offshore renewable energy farm. It helps to assess its feasibility and evaluating the relevant characteristics that influence it the most

Sizing a fleet of containerships for a given market

The potential growth found inthe short sea shipping sector motivated the development of a methodology usedas a decision support tool in which both the parameters regarding the demand ofmarkets and the characteristics of the fleet may be tested for its evaluation.It is also possible to determine the fleet deployment, establishing its routesand scales in the ports for a particular scenario. The considered methodologymay be divided in two parts, being the first one related with the generation ofall feasible routes, alongside all the parameters specific to each route foreach vessel class. The second part is the introduction of a linear programmingmodel that maximizes the shipping operation’s total profit, according a givenset of restrictions. The models were structured according to three main criteria:the evaluation of the fleet for each vessel’s class; the optimal route for eachvessel and the frequency in each port. To provide the methodology’s validation,the developed models shall be submitted to a fictitious operational scenario,considering three different situations: the fleet’s normal operation; aparametric variation of required demand for the same fleet composition; anevaluation of several fleet compositions for the same demand level

Experimental and numerical investigation of the hydrodynamic performance of an oscillating water column wave energy converter

The performance of an oscillating water column wave energy converter is investigated based on both numerical and experimental approaches. The viscosity effects are neglected in the numerical approach and the boundary integral equation method (BIEM) is implemented to solve the appropriate 2D boundary value problem (BVP). The influence of turbine damping and wave period is evaluated in the numerical model in both regular and random waves. A comprehensive experimental campaign is carried out in both regular and irregular waves to validate the numerical results as well as to investigate the influence of wave height, period and turbine damping on the efficiency of the converter. High and low turbine damping conditions are imposed to the experimental model. It is found that both the numerical and experimental results have a satisfactory agreement for the small wave amplitudes. It is detected that the efficiency of the device is very sensitive to the variations in the turbine damping although the absolute maximum efficiency is less sensitive to the slight alterations applied to the turbine damping. It is observed in the experimental study that the influence of the wave height has less importance than the other two parameters (turbine damping and incoming wave period) although the effect of the wave height becomes prominent in high wave amplitudes and causes the efficiency of the device to become less sensitive to variations in wave period and to tend to have an uniform value in wide wave period ranges.The work has been conducted within the Strategic Research Plan of the Centre for Marine Technology and Ocean Engineering, which is financed by Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. The first author has been funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia – FCT) under contract SFRH/BD/98287/2013. The experimental part of the work was conducted in the wave flume of the Hydraulics Laboratory integrated in the Group of Civil Engineering and Marine Energies (GICEMA), Escuela Politécnica Superior based on the scientific cooperation agreement between Instituto Superior Técnico and University of Santiago de Compostela.S