Ireland is ideally located to benefit from the waves generated in the Atlantic Ocean. Globally, the Northern Temperate Zone has the best sites for capturing wave power. Ireland possesses one of the richest wave energy climates in the world and lies close to a large consumer market in N.W. Europe. Wave Energy refers to the energy contained in the ocean surface waves and the capture of that energy to generate electricity. The wave power is determined by wave height, wave speed, wave length, and water density.
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Off the west coast of Ireland, the annual average wave height is 2.5m-3m, however winter events are substantially greater. In December 2007, 14m waves were measured at the data buoys.
Annual Average wave height (source: Accessible Wave Energy Resource Atlas: Ireland, 2005)
Sources of Wave Information
The Marine Institute provides realtime wave readings for locations around the Irish coast.
Marine Weather Buoy Network
The Irish Marine Weather Buoy Network provides weather and wave data at 6 locations around the Irish coast. Real-time wave height and direction data are available on the website and it updated hourly. It is possible to download 3 days of data from the Weather Buoy Network Observations website, if you require a longer time series, you can request this through the data request service.
Galway Bay Wave Energy Test Site
Real time wave information is available for Galway Bay. The Marine Institute have installed a waverider at the wave energy test site off Spideal to support developers of Ocean Energy devices. The wave data is updated every 3 minutes and can be viewed at the through the map on the Integrated Marine Observation System. Recent wave data for the Galway Bay site can is also available for download.
Weekly Wave Forecast
Oceanographic Services run the SWAN numerical wave model on a weekly basis. This provides a weekly Wave Forecast and predicts the wave direction, height, speed and period on a 1 km grid for Irish waters.
Wave Energy Atlas
The Marine Institute and SEI commissioned ESBI to complete an atlas of the wave energy resource in Irish waters. The report is available to download as a PDF and the corresponding maps and figures are accessible through the Marine Institute web mapping services:
Wave modelling
The Oceanographic Services team provide a wave modelling service to simulate the propagation of swell and the development of wind generated waves, using the SWAN computer model. This work is mainly associated with the development of wave energy devices using the wave energy test site in Galway Bay.
Data Requests
If you require a longer time series of wave data, please log a request through the Data Requests Page
Locations of realtime wave readings around Ireland