An assessment of available ocean current hydrokinetic energy near the North Carolina shore

Ocean currents have the potential to supply electricity from a renewable source to coastal regions. The assessment of the potential energy that could be generated is the first step towards developing this resource. Data from the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) and high-frequency radar measurements have been used to assess an area extending from 34.85° N to 35.15°N, and from 74.85°W to 74.5°W near the North Carolina shore. The assessment shows the area to exhibit a power density of at least 500 W/m2 in over 50% of the days and 1000 W/m2 or higher one third of the studied period. The results also show the direction of the ocean velocity to be very uniform in the northeast direction, which would facilitate a future exploitation of the resource. In addition, statistical analysis applying Weibull, Rayleigh, and Gaussian distributions is also presented. It is shown that the use of a Weibull probability distribution facilitates the analysis of ocean velocity conditions and is also able to predict the power density with a high degree of accuracy.