Energy: EAI magazine’s Special Issue on Ocean Energy Available Online

The Special Issue of EAI - Energia, Ambiente e Innovazione -  on ocean energy. The two-monthly scientific magazine gives an updated overview on the ongoing activities and the outcomes of research in Italy on the possible production of energy from waves and tides.

The special issue  Ocean energy: Ongoing research in Italy is intended to be a comprehensive collection of articles describing the ocean energy converter technologies designed for application in the Italian Seas by the major Research and Academic organizations in Italy. “We hope that this collection of review and original papers will contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the current status of development of ocean energy in Italy”, says Gianmaria Sannino, ENEA researcher.

Overall, this special issue emphasizes the strong effort that the scientific community has put on ocean energy, by both seeking for the most promising coastal sites in terms of high wave energy potential and developing wave and tidal energy converters to generate electric power.

On the other hand, although the Mediterranean Sea has a lower amount of wave energy available than oceans, it has very interesting characteristics which can be exploited using diverse devices allowing, for instance, to convert into electricity even the energy from waves with lower height and period values.

According to what the National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP) stipulates, by the year 2020 the Italian Government is expected to meet the targets of 3 MW of installed capacity by setting-up energy-producing facilities all along Italy’s 8000 km coastline.

ENEA contributes to the development of this field by implementing a specific programme of activities and collaborations that has already produced promising outcomes: PEWEC (Pendulum Wave Energy Converter), a 1:12 scale prototype of an off-shore, energy-producing floating system, realized in collaboration with  Politecnico di Torino; since 2013 a system of Mediterranean wave forecasts is used to produce five-day hourly predictions on the amount of available wave energy, with a spatial detail of a few hundred meters (http://utmea.enea.it/data/waves/index.php). Such a system is associated with Mediterranean wave climate atlas, the first mapping of the most interesting areas where wave energy can be largely exploited. Finally, in the European ambit, ENEA participates in the Joint Programme on Marine Renewable Energy of EERA (European Energy Research Alliance).

The Special EAI Issue: Ocean energy: Ongoing research in Italy is available online, among the Publications in the ENEA website

For further information, please contact:

Gianmaria Sannino, Centro Ricerche Casaccia, gianmaria.sannino@enea.it