Open AccessWave Energy Forecasting at Three Coastal Buoys in the Bay of Biscay
Author(s) -
Gabriel Ibarra-Berastegi,
Jon Saenz,
Ganix Esnaola,
Agustin Ezcurra,
Alain Ulazia,
Naiara Rojo,
Gorka Gallastegui
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
ieee journal of oceanic engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.752
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1558-1691
pISSN - 0364-9059
DOI - 10.1109/joe.2016.2529400
Subject(s) - geoscience , power, energy and industry applications
In 2008, the first commercial wave farm came online in Portugal. As with other types of renewable energy, the electricity obtained from waves has the drawback of intermittency. Knowing a few hours ahead how much energy waves will hold can contribute to a better management of the electricity grid. In this work, three types of statistical models have been used to create up to 24-h forecasts of the zonal and meridional components of wave energy flux (WEF) levels at three directional buoys located off the coast in the Bay of Biscay. Each model's performance has been compared at a 95% confidence level with the simplest prediction (persistence of levels), along with the forecasts provided by the physics-based WAve Modeling (WAM) wave model at the nearest grid point. The results indicate that for forecasting horizons between 3 and roughly 16 h ahead, the statistical models built on random forests (RFs) outperform the rest, including WAM and persistence.