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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Toward the Instrumentation and Data Acquisition of a Tidal Turbine in Real Site Conditions

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory manufactured, instrumented, and deployed thermoplastic composite blades and a data acquisition system (NDAQ) on one of Verdant Power’s Gen5d 5 m diameter tidal turbines in New York’s East River. The thermoplastic blades had internal strain gages, and the NDAQ was a stand-alone system for monitoring and recording the strain and angular position of the blades. The turbine with thermoplastic blades operated and produced power successfully for 3 months, contributing energy to the New York City electric grid. The NDAQ hardware, instrumentation, and structure all survived the deployment and were still functional upon retrieval of the system, but no data were collected. Even though the data retrieval was not a success, data acquisition for deployed subsea marine renewable structures is a new undertaking, and it is critical to share lessons learned from national laboratory experiences. The successful deployment of thermoplastic composite blades marks a significant advancement toward improved materials for subsea components, as well as an advancement in recyclable composite materials. This article outlines the methodology and lessons learned for the instrumentation and data acquisition system.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2021

Grid Value Proposition of Marine Energy

Marine energy technologies convert the energy of ocean waves, and tidal, river, and ocean currents into electricity and other forms of usable energy. The marine energy resource potential in the United States is significant and geographically diverse, with a study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy estimating that the nation’s annual marine energy potential is approximately 2,300 TWh/year across the 50 states, or greater than 57 percent of U.S. electricity generation in 2019. However, the marine energy industry still faces hurdles to commercialization. While high costs relative to wind and solar remain a key challenge, other hurdles relate to marine energy’s value streams not being well characterized and not captured by traditional energy comparison metrics like the levelized cost of energy. To address this challenge, this project undertakes several types of analyses to identify and illustrate value propositions for marine energy resources. It provides a fresh framework for considering electric system benefits based on unique marine energy attributes, and provides analyses illustrating and quantifying those benefits. The authors find many opportunities for the deployment of marine energy technologies both in the near term and within typical utility planning timeframes (i.e. up to 20 years). From a resource and technology perspective, marine energy resources can deliver distinct and valuable benefits to different configurations of the grid, whether the bulk system, isolated distribution systems, or remote communities, islands, and microgrids. Marine energy resources can be valuable in increasing technology diversity in a generation portfolio, providing energy where it is otherwise difficult to come by, supporting local resiliency, complementing and being complemented by other resources including solar, wind, and energy storage, and avoiding land constraints.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2022

RITE Gen5 KHPS Levelized Cost of Energy

Levelized Cost of Energy analysis for Verdant Power Gen5 KHPS utilizing annualized AEP based on actual energy generation at the RITE Project during 2020-21. The WEC devices analyzed include attenuator, point absorber, oscillating wave surge converter, oscillating water column, overtopping/terminator device, submerged pressure differential, bulge wave, and rotating mass type wave energy converter devices. The CEC devices analyzed include horizontal axis turbine, vertical axis turbine, oscillating hydrofoil, enclosed tips (Venturi), Archimedes screw, and tidal kite type current energy converter devices.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2022

HERO WEC V1.0 - SolidWorks Model

The attached zip file includes a SolidWorks pack-and-go assembly of NREL's HERO WEC (hydraulic and electric reverse osmosis wave energy converter) V1.0. This model does not include all aspects of the design (i.e. RO (reverse osmosis) system, electrical enclosure, hose, cable) it only includes the WEC and PTO (power take-off) design.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2023

Tidal energy extraction modifies tidal asymmetry and transport in a shallow, well-mixed estuary

Tidal energy extraction is increasingly being studied as a potential renewable energy resource in estuaries worldwide. Although it is understood that energy extraction via tidal stream turbines can modify currents and transport within estuaries, it is not clear how the underlying nonlinear physical mechanisms dictating tidal hydrodynamics are modulated. This research investigates the influence of a hypothetical tidal stream turbine array on barotropic tidal processes in a shallow, well-mixed system: the Piscataqua River – Great Bay (PRGB) estuary, using a numerical model. The modeled turbine farm includes 180 turbines which would extract an estimated 44.7 GWh of energy, annually. The tidal hydrodynamic model for the existing condition is validated with in-situ observations of currents and water level before analyzing tidal asymmetry and transport with and without tidal turbines. Results indicate that the tidal turbine array will decrease tidal elevation and current magnitudes system-wide, but generally reduce ebb currents and transport more than flood over most of the estuary footprint, thereby diminishing tidal asymmetry. The smaller asymmetric distortion compared to the no-turbine case is attributed to reductions in the storage volume of water over the estuary’s extensive tidal flat regions between low and high waters which decreases the associated nonlinear intertidal storage mechanism up to 25%. This leads to weakened ebb dominance over estuary sections from the mouth to mid-reaches, where depths are deep enough to keep the combined nonlinear shallow water and frictional effects from asserting control over the storage mechanism. Even in upstream shallow regions where depth-dependent friction controls asymmetry in both cases, the frictional mechanism is reduced only by 10% with turbines. Some environmental considerations of this work are discussed, with focus on sediment transport, water quality, and ecology.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2024

Recent Advances in Assessing Environmental Effects of Marine Renewable Energy Around the World

Marine renewable energy (MRE) is increasingly of interest to coastal nations as a source of renewable energy that can support climate change mitigation goals as well as provide secure locally-produced energy for coastal and island communities. MRE extracts power from tidal streams, waves, ocean currents, run of rivers, and gradients in the ocean, with specialized devices developed and tested for each energy resource. Alongside development of MRE technologies and systems, first in Europe and then in North America, Australia, Asia, and other regions, it has been universally recognized that there is also a need to examine potential effects on marine animals, habitats, ecosystem processes, local communities and other sea users, to ensure that the MRE industry can be developed in a responsible and sustainable manner. This paper looks at the status of assessment and monitoring for potential environmental effects associated with MRE projects around the world. Over 80 projects were identified worldwide as having been tested, demonstrated, or commercially deployed with associated environmental monitoring. Five of the projects that represent tidal stream, wave, and run of river projects are examined in more detail to determine the types of data and information collected for those projects, the outputs of the monitoring campaigns, and the actions taken as a result of the data collection and analysis. Recommendations are provided for standardization of the monitoring approaches, instruments, and analysis methods at MRE project sites worldwide.

marine renewable energy, environmental effects, ri↗
DOE OSTI2020

Coastal Community Resiliency Enhancement Using Marine Hydrokinetic (MHK) Resources and Networked Microgrids

Enormous challenges are inherent in the operation of modern distribution grids. In particular, distribution feeders can be severely compromised under extreme conditions such as large-scale weather events (e.g., hurricanes, floods, and other types of natural disasters). To combat this problem, they turn to local energy support from distributed energy resources, such as solar and wind, marine hydrolinetic (MHK), and other types of energy. In this report, we investigate the actual characteristics of MHK resources to enhance coastal community resiliency. Two typical types of MHK resources (i.e., wave and tidal resources) illustrate the coastal resilience enhancement framework. By identifying their operational characteristics, such as target time-scales and potential power generation variations, we detail a holistic coastal community resiliency enhancement framework that integrates both optimization and control efforts. The optimization problem is formulated to significantly minimize the power outage time at the critical infrastructures in coastal communities by implementing multiple autonomous and dynamic microgrids around MHK resources. Therefore, during severe power outages caused by natural disasters (e.g., floods, hurricanes), the coastal community load profiles can be satisfied using local MHK resources in each microgrid with limited or no power support from upstream power grids.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2023

A comparison of the power potential for surface- and seabed-deployed tidal turbines in the San Juan Archipelago, Salish Sea, WA

The San Juan archipelago lies along the axis of tidal movement between Straits of Juan de Fuca and Strait of Georgia in the Salish Sea. The amplitude of the tidal exchange produces significant tidal currents between the islands, as well as in Rosario and Haro Straits. These are of interest as a future source of electrical power generation, given the islands’ dependence on electricity supply by a subsea cable from the mainland. Here, we evaluate the tidal current energy potential in this region through a re-analysis of measurements collected by the National Ocean Service (NOS) and a high-resolution numerical model. Given the considerable variations in water depth and vertical velocity profiles across candidate tidal energy sites, we consider the trade-offs between tidal turbines deployed from a floating platform and those anchored to the seabed. Measurement re-analysis indicates several locations that could support tidal current power generation by MW-scale turbines with an acceptable balance between turbine size, rated power, and capacity factor. Even for relatively large (30 m) turbine diameters, surface-deployed turbines would be expected to produce up to 30 % more electricity than the same turbine deployed near the seabed due to vertical shear, with this difference increasing for smaller diameter turbines. A benchmark comparison at the measurement locations with the highest power generation potential shows relatively good model fidelity, though, even with relatively high resolution, time-average power density disagreements of ± 50 % persist throughout the water column. Nonetheless, the simulation identifies several locations with power generation potential more than twice as high as locations in the measurement re-analysis. These sites were either not surveyed by NOS or excluded due to data quality issues. Altogether, these results demonstrate the complimentary of models and measurements for tidal energy site assessment and suggest that tidal currents could be an important source of electricity generation in the San Juan archipelago.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2023

Review of TEAMER Awards for WEC-Sim Support: Preprint

Testing Expertise and Access for Marine Energy Research (TEAMER) is a U.S. Department of Energy Water Power Technologies Office sponsored program, overseen by the Pacific Ocean Energy Trust, which aims to advance the state of marine energy technologies. The program connects technology developers with experts at U.S. facilities, including numerical modeling and analysis facilities, like WEC-Sim. The WEC-Sim facility is supported by the WEC-Sim development team at Sandia National Laboratories and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. WEC-Sim (Wave Energy Converter SIMulator) is an open-source software for simulating wave energy converters. WEC-Sim can model the multi-body dynamics of devices comprised of bodies, joints, power take-off systems, and mooring systems. Since TEAMER's first round of support in 2020, there have been eighteen TEAMER awards focused on numerical model development in WEC-Sim. TEAMER awards for WEC-Sim support have modeled a wide range of wave energy converter archetypes, including point absorbers, attenuators, oscillating water columns, and many other novel architectures. A wide variety of studies have been conducted, leading to important insights for TEAMER partners and software improvements for WECSim. This article highlights several successful WEC-Sim TEAMER awards. The awards described herein include TEAMER recipients Ocean Motion Technologies, AquaHarmonics, iProTech, East Carolina University, Virginia Tech, Maiden Wave Energy, and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. The awards of these seven partners contain a wide range of investigations and cover the creation of baseline hydrodynamic models, PTO modeling, geometry optimization in both boundary element methods and WECSim, and model tuning and validation.

industry support↗
DOE OSTI2025

Electrifying Subsea Infrastructure Through Ocean-Powered Systems

This paper explores the potential for electrifying subsea oil and gas infrastructure using wave-powered ocean energy systems. It details how a type of system, an Autonomous Offshore Power System (AOPS), can provide a potential solution and outlines the work and findings to data of joint industry project that integrates and co-demonstrates an AOPS with an electrified subsea asset. In this Project (Project), an AOPS will provide power and data communications to an electrified subsea asset at the PacWave South test site off the U.S. Oregon coast. Here, this paper provides a description and analysis of the system configuration, subsea asset integration process, and pre-deployment testing plans, along with projected benefits for the industry.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2021

Research and Development Pathways for Powering the Blue Economy with Marine Renewable Energy

As marine renewable energy technology is adapted or designed for Blue Economy end-uses, challenges unique to operation at sea and in remote coastal areas must be addressed to meet demands distinct from utility grid electricity generation. Foundational research and development with this end goal is conducted to broadly enable the initiative of Powering the Blue Economy. Determination of distinct R&D topics is informed by pathways including an engineering design customer-driven approach and feedback from the creation and administration of prize competitions in the Blue Economy technology space. Critical research outcomes, such as determining the performance of small wave energy converters and benchmarking the reliability for power systems at sea, are among the goals of ten foundational R&D projects currently underway.

customer discovery↗
DOE OSTI2023

Power Take-Off Design Study for a Small-Scale Oscillating Surge Wave Energy Converter for Powering the Blue Economy Applications: Preprint

The power take-off (PTO) is an integral part of wave energy conversion, and the design process is nontrivial. Better PTOs, and better processes for selecting and designing PTO architectures for various applications, would benefit devices that assist in powering the blue economy by decreasing time and money spent on PTO design and increasing the overall energy capture performance of these devices. This paper chronicles the selection process of a PTO for a small-scale surge-type wave energy converter (WEC) for the purpose of informing future PTO selection processes. Three PTO architectures are evaluated in WEC-Sim: a hydraulic check valve PTO, a hydraulic active valving PTO, and a directly electrified PTO. Simple models of each PTO are constructed. Because a model for the small-scale device was initially unavailable, the PTOs are simulated on a large-scale device. The results are scaled down using Froude scaling and compared to results from directly simulating a small-scale model. Strong assumptions are made because this work is early in the design stages, and a coarse look at PTO options was desired. Specifically, the effectiveness of controls is investigated, along with the efficiency of energy conversion. However, energy capture is only part of the consideration; there are also logistic concerns to be considered when selecting a PTO. For example, components for large-scale WECs are so large and expensive that it may make sense to custom-build PTO components, but small- scale WECs would benefit from off-the-shelf availability because the cost of customization would be a significant portion of the total capital cost of deployment at a small scale. Submersible, off-the-shelf components are much easier to source for hydraulic PTOs. Because of highly effective controls, efficient energy conversion, and availability of marine-grade components, an active valving hydraulic PTO is selected for this small-scale surge-type WEC.

electric PTO↗
DOE OSTI2023

TEAMER: Maximal Asymmetric Drag Wave Energy Converter

Boundary element method (BEM) and WEC-Sim analysis of UMass Dartmouth's maximal asymmetric drag wave energy converter (MADWEC), including its tethered ballast system and PTO (power take-off).

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2024

HERO WEC - Bills of Materials: WEC, RO System, and Submersible Pump

This submission includes detailed Bills of Materials for the NREL-designed and -built Hydraulic and Electric Reverse Osmosis Wave Energy Converter (HERO WEC), as well as the reverse osmosis assembly and submersible pump that are used in the HERO WEC. The WEC file is specific to the components and sub-components that are included on the in-water buoy portion of the WEC. The RO file is specific to the components and sub-components that are included on the reverse osmosis module that is used for both the hydraulic and electric configuration. The submersible pumps file is specific to the components and sub-components that are included on the submersible pump module that is used feed the reverse osmosis module when the HERO WEC is in the electric configuration. In addition to this submission, an additional submission available for the WEC model itself, including the power electronics enclosure, and reverse osmosis assembly that is needed to supply water in the electric submission. A link is provided below. More details on this project including data, CAD drawings, etc. can be found in the HERO-WEC main page link below. This data set has been developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, operated by Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under Contract No. DE-AC36-08GO28308. Funding provided U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Water Power Technologies Office.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2024

HERO WEC V1 Upgrades - SolidWorks Models (WEC, RO System, and Submersible Pump Housing)

The attached zip files include SolidWorks pack-and-go assemblies of NREL's HERO WEC (hydraulic and electric reverse osmosis wave energy converter), the reverse osmosis (RO) assembly, and the submersible pump assembly that is used to provide flow to the RO assembly in the electric configuration. These 3 models were upgraded in 2023 from their baseline models. The HERO WEC model does not include all aspects of the design (i.e. RO system, electrical enclosure, hose, cable), it only includes the WEC and PTO (power take-off) design. This model supersedes the old MHKDR model submission, linked below. The RO model file includes a SolidWorks (version 2023) pack-and-go assembly of the RO assembly that was used for HERO WEC as it was upgraded in 2023. This model ONLY includes the RO assembly and not the WEC, hoses, etc. The submersible pump enclosure model includes a SolidWorks (version 2023) pack-and-go assembly of the submersible pump assembly that is used to provide flow to the RO assembly in the electric configuration HERO WECas it was upgraded in 2023. This model ONLY includes the submersible pump assembly and not the WEC, RO system, hoses, etc. This work has been developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, operated by Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under Contract No. DE-AC36-08GO28308. Funding provided U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Water Power Technologies Office.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2022

Internal Reaction Mass Taxonomy and Narrow-Down Study

Internal reaction mass (IRM) wave energy converters (WEC) capture wave energy by reacting against a moving mass that is suspended within their hulls. Due to their hermetically sealed Power Take Off (PTO), compact form factor and relatively simple mooring requirements, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has identified IRM WECs are good candidates for applications such as ocean observation. A literature review of existing IRM mechanisms lead to the classification of IRM WECs based on their principal method of energy capture and principal axes of operation. The IRM categories include sliding mass, pendular and gyroscopic devices. A narrow down study was conducted to ascertain the most promising mechanisms for further investigation; devices were evaluated based on a decision matrix of weighted criteria that included device power output, prototypability and power to mass ratio. The narrow down study identified the issue of achieving resonance with pendulum-based designs, as well as the poor response produced by reaction to long period waves. Chaotic pendula and methods to multiply agitation were identified as a means to increase power output. Alternative methods of power generation, such as triboelectric nanogenerators, were also identified as a technology that would benefit from multiplied agitation and chaotic motion. This work was funded under the U.S. Department of Energy's Water Power Technologies Office's Powering the Blue Economy portfolio.

ENGINEERING,TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗