GNGTS 2024 - Atti del 42° Convegno Nazionale

Session 3.1 GNGTS 2024 photovoltaic power, since the regional regulatory framework forbids the establishment of any wind power plants. Wave energy atlases are based on measurements from buoys, satellite observatons and from models. In recent years, several authors have presented global wave energy atlases. These works do not include observatons from the Mediterranean Sea; rather they are based on models, with a spatal resoluton too coarse, to be able to distnguish, on a smaller scale, the spatal variatons of the availability of wave energy. These details are important to identfy suitable sites for the producton of electricity in relatvely small basins like the Mediterranean, and especially for minor islands. Generally speaking, islands are the ideal laboratory of sustainability and they are today, all over the world, in a dimension of great interest where ambiton and concreteness are combined. The challenge is to make the smaller Italian islands a vanguard in the world in the disseminaton of innovatve and economically sustainable solutons on energy and water, in the circular economy and sustainable mobility. A perspectve that, as the internatonal experiences, can help to revive the economy and atract tourism to the islands because it preserves these unique ecosystems, making them atractve precisely for their landscape and environmental qualites (Legambiente, 2018). Previous studies have shown that wave farms could be implemented at some sites. For example, Vicinanza et al. (2011) reported the ofshore wave energy potentals of the Italian seas. The results highlighted that the west coasts of Sicily are the most energetc among the Italian coasts. Indeed, the highest energy values were obtained for the buoys of Mazara del Vallo, which corresponded to 4.75kWm-1. Fig. 2 shows the average wave energy of the Sicilia coasts (Iuppa et al., 2015a). The average wave energy has a not negligible spatal variability even over distances of the order of 20km. This variability cannot be adequately described by local buoy measurements, or by models with a lower spatal resoluton. The average power is a useful parameter to identfy promising areas for the producton of wave energy, its value however is presented as a contributon of the individual states of the sea, distributed over a range of wave heights, periods and directons. On the west coast of Sicily, the average power fow is between 5 and 6 kW/m, which increases gradually, up to average value of 6 kW/m, in the Aegadian Archipelago (Iuppa et al., 2015a,b). The Aegadian islands are among the most productve in the Mediterranean Sea and surely the most promising of the Italy. The MARE project focused on two main lines: ● The collecton, organizaton and analysis of available environmental data, with partcular reference to those strictly related to the studied problem; ● The identfcaton, on the basis of geological, geophysical and geochemical investgaton of the potental for energy producton of the highlighted case of study. And includes the following types of surveys in the Aegadian Archipelago and surroundings: - bathymetric surveys