Wave and tidal resource assessment

Independent assessments to help you understand the generation potential of your wave or tidal energy devices and the conditions in which they operate.

Knowing the characteristics of a wave or tidal energy converter is essential to predicting a power project’s output. But it is only part of the story. Local site conditions and interactions between devices in an array play a significant role in how devices perform in the field.

Our wave and tidal energy Resource assessments help you understand these complex factors. The assessment shows you both the energy available to a device and the conditions under which the energy farm will operate. This helps you decide how and where to site your marine energy devices, and provides invaluable insight for planning, operations and construction.

Site characterization and selection
For each assessment, we carry out a variety of tasks to help you characterize and choose the best site for your energy farm. These can include:

• Mapping the resource to select the best sites, from national-scale studies to local-scale micro-siting analyses
• Detailed quantification of resource characteristics at a specific site: 
  • Numerical modelling to predict the long-term resource
  • Specification of site measurement campaigns
  • Analysis of on-site measurements and correlation to long-term data
  • Determining metocean design conditions, such as turbulence characteristics and extremes conditions (waves, currents, water levels)

Our Resource assessment services are an essential first step in a Pre-construction energy yield.

A partner to rely on
Our Resource assessments draw on the wide-ranging experience and expertise available within DNV. We've carried out numerous resource analyses at global, regional, local and super-fine scales. With a dedicated wave and tidal team in place since 2005, our experts truly understand how the resource interacts with the device and the array.

In these assessments, accurate data is king – ensuring reliable energy yield and device behaviour predictions. Hence we draw data from a wide range of sources including models, site measurements and satellites. And we work with our own in-house Virtual met data experts, using atmospheric models to drive the oceanographic models at the heart of our calculations.