Abstract
The Outer Hebrides of Scotland were identified as an area with a high wave power resource of 42.4kW/m. The Outer Hebrides of Scotland are currently targeted by a range of developers for demonstration and commercial developments of wave energy converters and current planning efforts are based on initial deployments by 2014. Technology providers with well advanced plans to develop the Hebridean wave resource include Aquamarine Power (Oyster) [1], Pelamis (P2) [2] and Voith Wavegen (OWC) [3]; all of these companies are partners in the Hebridean Marine Energy Futures project [4] to help move the industry into the commercialisation stage.
As part of the Hebridean Marine Energy Futures project, a three year programme aimed at developing a high resolution wave energy resource map to support the site selection process of marine energy developers, a network of three wave measuring buoys was deployed 15km offshore in a depth of 60m and at distances of 11km between buoys. Measured wind and wave data from this buoy network for autumn 2011 are analysed and presented in this paper along with estimated wave power for the same duration.