In this study, a joint evaluation of the wind and wave energy over the Black Sea basin is performed for a 20-year time interval. The importance of such a study is enhanced by the fact that the potential of the wave energy cannot be considered high compared to the large oceans, while the wind conditions over the Black Sea can be considered significant in various areas. The wind fields from the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction were used for wind energy estimation. A high resolution wave hindcast database, as resulted from the simulations performed with the Simulating WAves Nearshore model, is used for a detailed analysis of the wave energy potential in the basin of the Black Sea. The reliability of the wave simulation results was increased by means of some data assimilation methodologies. The variability and complementarity of these renewable energy resources was investigated. The analysis showed that there exist some suitable areas for combined wind-wave exploitation.

The objective of this work is to analyze the wind and wave energy potential in the proximity of the Greek islands. Thus, by evaluating the synergy between wind and waves, a more comprehensive picture of the renewable energy resources in the target area is provided. In this study, two different data sources are considered. The first data set is provided by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) through the ERA-Interim project and covers an 11-year period, while the second data set is Archiving, Validation and Interpretation of Satellite Oceanographic data (AVISO) and covers six years of information. Using these data, parameters such as wind speed, significant wave height (SWH) and mean wave period (MWP) are analyzed. The following marine areas are targeted: Ionian Sea, Aegean Sea, Sea of Crete, Libyan Sea and Levantine Sea, near the coastal environment of the Greek islands. Initially, 26 reference points were considered. For a more detailed analysis, the number of reference points was narrowed down to 10 that were considered more relevant. Since in the island environments the resources are in general rather limited, the proposed work provides some outcomes concerning the wind and wave energy potential and the synergy between these two natural resources in the vicinity of the Greek islands. From the analysis performed, it can be noticed that the most energetic wind conditions are encountered west of Cios Island, followed by the regions east of Tinos and northeast of Crete. In these locations, the annual average values of the wind power density (Pwind) are in the range of 286–298.6 W/m². Regarding the wave power density (Pwave), the most energetic locations can be found in the vicinity of Crete, north, south and southeast of the island. There, the wave energy potential is in the range of 2.88–2.99 kW/m.

The main objective of the present study is to quantify the recent past and explore the near future wind power potential in the Black Sea basin, evaluating the possible changes. Furthermore, an analysis of the wind climate in the target area was also performed. The wind resources have been assessed using the wind fields provided by various databases. Thus, the wind power potential from the recent past was assessed based two different sources covering each one the 30-year period (1981–2010). The first source is the ERA-Interim atmospheric reanalysis provided by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), while the second source represents the hindcast wind fields simulated by a Regional Climate Model (RCM) and provided by EURO-CORDEX databases. The estimation of the near future wind power potential was made based on wind fields simulated by the same RCM under future climate projections, considering two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) and they cover also a 30-year time interval (2021–2050). Information in various reference points were analyzed in detail. Several conclusions resulted from the present work. Thus, as regards the mean wind power potential in winter season, in 51% of the locations a significant increase is projected in the near future (both scenarios). Besides providing a detailed description of the wind conditions from the recent past over the Black Sea basin considering two major sources, the novelty of the present work consists in the fact that it gives an estimation of the expected wind climate in the target area for the near future period and at the same time an evaluation of the climate change impacts on the wind speed and wind power potential.

The objective of this work is to analyze the wind and wave conditions along the coasts of the European seas. The emphasis is put on the mean and maximum values. The areas studied are characterized by intense maritime activities, including traffic, as well as various harbor and offshore operations. In the present study, 35 years of data (1983–2017) coming from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) were processed, corresponding to 40 different geographical locations. Thus, these 40 reference points are defined for some of the most relevant offshore locations in the coastal environments targeted. As regards the data considered in the analysis, two different sets were used. The first corresponds to the wave model, while the second to the atmospheric model, both operated by ECMWF. Finally, it can be concluded that the proposed work provides a global perspective related to the average and maximum wind and wave conditions and to a further extent on the climate dynamics along the coasts of the European seas.

Airborne wind energy systems (AWESs) represent a novel idea that aims to gather energy from stronger winds aloft while operating at altitudes above conventional wind turbines (WTs). For this study, we examined the wind resources at a height of 100 m available for traditional wind turbines with aerial wind energy technologies, in addition to the wind potential at higher altitudes up to 500 m. The considered period was 20 years from January 2002 to December 2020, and the data were extracted from the ERA5 reanalysis database. We studied the possibility of placing 500 kW and 5 MW airborne systems in the Black Sea and the Azov Sea and compared them with a conventional turbine. As expected, the western part of the Black Sea presented the best results, both for the 500 kW airborne system with an annual energy production (AEP) of 2.39 GWh and a capacity factor of 55%, and for the 5 MW airborne system, which has an annual electricity production of 15.81 GWh and a capacity factor of 36%. Better results were recorded for the Sea of Azov for both the 500 kW and the 5 MW airborne systems, with an AEP of 2.5 and 15.81 GWh and a capacity factor of 58% and 36%, respectively.

For a good understanding of human body biomechanics scientist all over the world are using motion capture systems (MoCap). Such a system is mainly composed of one or multiple high performance cameras and a process unit for gathering key information. A low – cost solution for these systems is the Kinect sensor from Microsoft. The Kinect sensor is a depth camera that can be used for assessing full – body movements in terms of joint and/or segment positions and movement geometries. The resulting data can be used in the robotic industry, in clinical solutions, video gaming industries etc. The functionality of the equipment has been highly debated in many studies wherefrom result that the depth camera in question is accurate and reliable in studies such as human biomechanics. The aim of this paper is to explain the logics behind this equipment and its functionality. Therefore we present a new approach in constructing a 3D human skeleton model that can be used for assessing asymmetries by determining the human silhouette in 3D, the position of human body key points and joints, the angles between the track segments and full body kinematics.