High-resolution modelling of a shallow marginal sea to assess the potential of energy production from marine currents: the northern Adriatic Sea case study

The Northern Adriatic Sea Reanalysis and Forecasting (NARF) system is a high-resolution (1/128°) modelling system designed to perform multi-purpose simulations (e.g. from decadal to operational temporal scales) of the oceanographic properties of the northern Adriatic Sea. Validation and quality assessment of horizontal current fields have been carried out for the 2006-2017 time period by comparing model outputs both with available observations and larger scale Copernicus Marine Service (CMS) reanalyses, showing better agreement with the experimental data, and a reduction of the average bias against observations compared to the lower resolution CMS products. In addition, NARF current speed was encountered to be generally more intense, with an overall increase of up to 50% compared to the lower resolution model. This data set was used to assess the energy potential of marine currents in the northern Adriatic. By analysing the statistics of the velocity fields, five areas, where the currents are more intense, were identified. However, none of the selected sites proved to be suitable for large-scale energy generation. Nevertheless, due to the better description of basin hydrodynamics, a drastic increase in the estimated power flux was observed when switching from lower resolution CMS to NARF reanalyses. This work emphasises the importance of high-resolution models in the field of renewable energy feasibility analysis, planning and design.