Enhancing wave energy farm efficiency: Eigen-stacking ensemble framework

The significant wave height (SWH) plays a pivotal role across diverse domains, ranging from the assessment of wave energy potential to the optimization of marine operations and the advancement of ocean engineering techniques. Understanding the spatial and temporal distribution patterns of SWH data among buoy network stations holds utmost importance for various applications. This research introduces a novel methodology for accurate spatiotemporal SWH prediction across multiple stations within buoy monitoring networks. Leveraging eigen SWH time series enables the identification of dataset patterns, feature extraction, and dimensionality reduction. Examining eigen time series provides insights into SWH dynamics, allowing exclusive use for prediction across all stations. By incorporating this eigen SWH time series as the sole input into a stacking ensemble model, we introduce a highly efficient and accurate framework for SWH prediction. Notably, the methodology achieves success in forecasting hourly SWH values along the western United States coastline, utilizing a stacking ensemble technique for enhanced accuracy. Evaluation metrics confirm outstanding performance, with CE and R2 values surpassing 0.95 and 0.93, respectively. Further, a single Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model is incorporated as a benchmark to assess the effectiveness of the stacking ensemble model for significant wave height (SWH) prediction, with results demonstrating that the ensemble model outperforms the single LSTM in terms of accuracy and robustness. Consequently, the introduced stacking ensemble model promises autonomy in forecasting spatial-temporal SWH patterns, extending its applicability within ocean engineering and scientific research.