Ocean wave energy along Terengganu coast of Malaysia

Abstract

Wave energy has a number of significant advantages with respect to other renewable energy sources – predictability, abundance, high load factor and low environmental impact, among others. Its late beginning relative to other renewable energy sources is down to the technological challenges that it poses. In addition to developing commercially viable wave energy converters, the resource characterization is a crucial point towards the exploitation of wave energy. Wave power along the Terengganu coast of Malaysia was analyzed at a time scale of months to examine the seasonal dependencies. The area of interest is the Terengganu coast of Malaysia bounded by latitudes between 3.5o N and 6.5o N and longitudes between 102o E and 104.0o E. The study was based on two-hourly data collected from wave measurement stations covering the period from January 1998 to August 2009. These investigations show that the Terengganu coast of Malaysia could provide a source of low wave power. The wave climate in the Terengganu coast is among the harsh in Malaysia. The total wave energy was found to be 17.69 MWh/m in an average year, whereas the average wave power varied between 0.15 to 6.49 kW/m. Moreover, the wave climate of the area was studied in order to characterize the sea states behind the wave energy availability. It was found that in this area more than 60% of the annual wave energy is provided by significant wave heights between 20 to 120 cm and waves with peak periods between 2 to 8 s accounted for more than 70% of the total wave energy. The main directions in terms of wave energy for whole year are N, which accounts for more than 40%, followed at some distance by NE, SW and S. Further, its high wave energy potential is available during northeast monsoon season and in general the main directions in terms of wave energy are N and NE, which accounts more than 80% of the total wave energy, which may be used as a reference for this area. It may be concluded that the Terengganu coast of Malaysia can consider northeast monsoon period for wave energy exploitation.