Abstract
This paper examines the impact of MetOcean conditions on weather window availability and duration for tidal energy operations and maintenance. Understanding these impacts at the initial planning stage will give a better estimation of project lifetime costs, and ensure that these costs are factored into the site selection methodology. Several sources of freely available data were input into the Delft3D modelling suite to produce spatially and temporally varying estimates of MetOcean data for the Surigao area in the Philippines. This data was validated where possible, with the generated tidal heights and flow speeds seeing a good fit to adjacent tide gauge and acoustic data. A Dijkstra’s Algorithm was applied to generate an optimum route to shore that accounted for depth restrictions. Weibull persistence statistics were successfully applied to the MetOcean characteristics at each point along this route, to calculate the probability of vessel limitations being exceeded. The number of probable access and waiting hours within a month, given a required weather window length and MetOcean threshold, was calculated. Flow is seen to be the most constraining, but also the most predictable MetOcean parameter and thus can be accounted for in operational planning. Wind is seen to impact little on transit but can be constraining for longer operations. Wave conditions are seen to constrain both transit and operations weather windows significantly under the limitations examined.