Análisis de la influencia de la variabilidad climática en parques eólicos marinos

Laburpena

Renewable energy has become leader of the energy model change in order to reduce the dependency of fossil fuels. Furthermore, the increasing concern about climate change (fossil fuels are considered one of the main reasons) is speeding up the development and implementation of renewable energy. One of the energy sources that is increasing the most is the wind energy. Governments, and more precisely, European Union, are making a big effort to increase the wind energy quote to the level of classical sources of energy. One of the main ideas to achieve this aim is to unlock the offshore wind energy potential, opening a huge field of improvement in the development of innovative technologies, research in new methodologies, optimization of the resources, improvement of the equipments and capacities, etc. Developed countries, which have built for last years onshore wind farms, are trying to lead the development of offshore wind. Currently, the great amount of power capacity is installed in the North Sea due to the shallow waters and the great energy potential. These first steps in offshore wind are based on the Oil and Gas sector know-how. In this research a deep review of the state of the art in offshore wind has been carried out. This review has allowed highlighting potential contributions to the general methodology for offshore wind farm design, from the wind resource assessment to the feasibility assessment. The main objective of this Thesis is to evaluate the influence of met-ocean conditions variability on several aspects of the offshore wind farms design and implementation. For this purpose, the wind resource behavior has been studied at first, based on unique sources of data both numerical and instrumental. It has been payed special attention to the influence of coastal topography on wind resource. The knowledge acquired has been applied to the improvement of the floating platform design and the economic feasibility assessment of offshore wind farms.