Andrew (UG)- Hang Ten (Kilowatts)!

Hello,

My name is Andrew Hardwick. I am a student at Daytona State College studying Marine Biology. Although I have been leaning more towards finding ways to harness renewable energy over the past year. Although I am fascinated by solar technology and want to find ways to make it more widespread, I recently discovered from my Oceanography professor (one Dr. Debra Woodall), that no one has yet to find out how much energy we could harness from the ocean waves. specifically Daytona Beach.

Of course, we can't realistically dedicate a significant portion of the World's Most Famous Beach to the machinery necessary to harness wave energy, so this will ave to be done offshore so as to not detract from the tourism that Daytona Beach attracts. Therefore I will survey information from four locations (with a bit of wriggle room in the form of .05 degree margin of error), the average height of the waves, the distance between wave crests, and windspeed/direction to determine weather or not:

Is Offshore Daytona Beach A Viable Location to Harness Wave Energy?


the website that I will be using is earth.nullschool.net. It has all of the necessary information which allows me to calculate how much (potential) energy a wave has per meter of length. The equation that is used to calculate the amount of energy a wave has involves the height of the wave crest and the time between waves. The equation is written thusly:

P=0.5xH⋀2xT(Kw/m)

P= power of the wave

0.5= constant

H= height of wave (in meters)

T= Time between waves (in Seconds)

Kw/m= Kilowatts per meter of wave length