The National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (NIPEC) foresees significant growth of renewables in the national energy mix (particularly wind and photovoltaics), which also includes, in a medium to long-term scenario, the use of marine sources, including wave energy. In addition, recently, several companies in the energy, marine and off-shore sectors have shown strong interest in marine sources.

In Italy, two Legislative Decrees (No. 169 of 01/08/16 and No. 232 of 13/12/2017) stipulate that the Port Network Authorities promote the drafting of the Port Network Energy and Environmental Planning Document (DEASP) on the basis of guidelines adopted by the Ministry of Environment, Land and Sea in agreement with the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport. The document defines strategic directions and identifies measures to improve energy efficiency and promote the use of renewable energy in the port environment.

The WaveSAX device is an Oscillating Water Column Wave Energy Converter conceived and developed by RSE in previous years of research. The activities carried out have led to a progressive improvement in the performance of the device and a decrease in construction/maintenance costs.
The report presents the research activities aimed at optimizing, through numerical studies, the construction aspects of the WaveSAX device. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study—carried out with the code ANSYS-CFX v.16.0—aims to verify the behavior of the device under conditions of variation in the characteristics (height and period) of the incident wave motion vary and in the number of blades of the impeller inserted in the device.

In addition, the report discusses aspects of the energy transition of Italian ports and illustrates the procedure for evaluating the potential for generating electricity from wave motion in an Italian port, taking the port of Civitavecchia as an example.