The West Coast of Vancouver Island (WCVI), with an average gross wave energy flux of 40-50 kW/m at the continental shelf, possesses one of the most energetic wave climates in the world and has the potential to meet the electric demands of the utility grid on Vancouver Island and numerous coastal remote communities. However, the development of wave energy sites has the potential to interrupt other existing marine activities and wave energy operations could damage the sensitive marine ecosystems. The objective of this thesis is to identify strategically important sites for wave energy – sites that have great economic potential in an energy generation context yet have minimal impacts on existing economic uses and minimal ecological impacts. Wave energy technology agnostic frequency and directional filters were developed based on a unionized representation of Wave Energy Converter (WEC) performance generated by combining four types of WEC performance characteristics. These two filters improved the quantification of extractable wave resources by accounting for the technological limits of wave frequencies and directions. Subsequently, a detailed economic evaluation was developed to estimate the influence of the distance to the coastline and transmission network, electricity market sizes, and a technology agnostic description of WEC farm physical layout on the selection of wave energy sites. The technology-agnostic description of WEC farm physical layouts was designed based on the cable properties, cable termination/distribution, and cable protection used in real-world projects. The WEC farm capacities are constrained by the transmission cable to minimize the cost for developing wave energy sites. Lastly, a multi-criteria analysis, which includes four stakeholder perspective scenarios, was developed to identify the strategically important sites for future wave energy development along the WCVI. A total of 16 regions, covering an area of 392 km2 and having an average of 35.68 kW/m wave energy flux, were identified as strategically important sites for wave farms. These regions show the potential to meet the electric demand of Vancouver Island, and they are worth further investigated when selecting a location for future wave energy development. / Graduate

Wave resource assessment is the collection of site-specific meteorological data to estimate the wave potential in a region and is carried out to mitigate the risks involved in the setup of wave energy converters. Wave resource assessment has been typically done using wave buoys. But wave buoys are expensive and require constant maintenance for smooth operation. An alternative to wave buoys is numerical wave modelling. Numerical wave modelling uses mathematical models to generate computer simulations that describe wave parameters in a region. This project is carried out in the region of Hvide Sande, a western port city of Denmark situated in the North Sea. Wave resource assessment is conducted for this region using the SWAN numerical wave model. The data from a wave buoy in the region is used to perform comparative analysis, in order to study the SWAN wave model and to compare the accuracy of the wave data between the measured buoy and the calculated model. The accuracy of the numerical predictions is further quantified by using a correlation coefficient and the relative square root error. This is followed by a scatter diagram for the region to find the most frequent sea states. The corresponding energy flux of the most frequent sea states was found to be in the range of 1-5 kW/m and the highest energy flux for the area is about 40 kW/m for the region.