Introduction
Creating a new energy source in the ocean can be viewed through the lens of a technology developer or a project developer. In many cases this is the same person but on some teams people may specialize in one or the other aspect. Technology developers are focused on the actual device; how does it move relative to the resource? How does the PTO capture energy? What materials work best in the environment? Project developers look toward getting the device in the water; what investors will provide funding? How do you keep the business running? Where is the best site for deployment? How will the project team interact with regulators? What environmental monitoring is required?
This page mostly describes the planning phase for a project developer, providing access to tools and resources to help with siting and permitting. The planning phase of a project can be extensive and involves choosing a resource (like tidal or wave energy), investigating potential installation sites, stakeholder engagement, assessing potential environmental effects, funding, market analysis, economics of production, and permitting. This page provides links to information on lessons learned by other developers, site resource characterization, permitting, and applicable standards. Permitting can be a multi-year process and making contacts with your regulators early in the project can save time as you proceed to the phase of open-water testing. Reviewing internationally accepted standards during the planning phase of a project can ease the burden of certification later in the project as energy production ramps up.
Idea for a new attenuator design, Seapower Ltd.
Market Selection
Energy markets are quite variable, dependent on private companies and national governments working to efficiently harness natural resources to provide power. An early decision for technology developers and project developers alike is how to approach a specific energy market? The two main markets are the land-based power grid and what is referred to in the United States as Powering The Blue Economy or the PBE market. This market consists of ocean-based power needs (e.g. buoys and platforms) and islanded-communities, which tend to be small, remote communities.
The Power Grid
A power grid is the backbone for modern society, where electricity is generated from various renewable (e.g., solar, wind, hydro, marine) and non-renewable (e.g., natural gas, oil, coal) sources to meet customer power needs that vary by time of day and season. The oceans provide substantial potential for meeting global energy demand. However, marine energy projects must compete with costs, timing, and reliability of traditional generation sources to be issued a power purchase agreement (PPA) by the energy regulatory authority. In the United States, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) manages this permitting process. Historic FERC permitting documents can be accessed at the Marine Energy Environmental Toolkit or at the FERC eLibrary.
Powering The Blue Economy (PBE)
The PBE market describes alternative uses for power generated by marine energy, separate from the power grid. These markets include powering ocean observation buoys, remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), offshore platforms, isolated communities, microgrids, desalination, mineral extraction, aquaculture, or green hydrogen production. Alternative markets may provide advantages as an opportunity to test at smaller scales, moving further from shore and away from ocean use conflicts, and providing a greater value proposition. More details can be found in the Powering the Blue Economy report.
Funding Opportunities and Support in the United States
Starting the development of a new wave or tidal device requires funding. Although some marine energy companies started as a hobby in a garage that may not be the surest path to deployment. Money either comes from private investors or public grants. Private investors will require a healthy return on their investment and may only fund projects that show a clear path to deployment. Federal and State agencies provide public grants for renewable energy projects, depending on the Technology Readiness Level. Check with coastal state agencies for possibilities of funding of deployment testing in State waters. Two Federal funding opportunities are described below, WPTO and TEAMER.
Water Power Technology Office (WPTO)
In the United States, the Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) is the prime source of public funds. WPTO has funded competitions with prizes up to $1,000,000 like the Wave Energy Prize (for wave power designs), the Waves To Water Prize (for wave powered desalination), the InDEEP prize (novel materials for embedded energy development), and the Ocean Observing Prize (for monitoring far off shore). College students can sharpen their marine energy skills by competing in the Marine Energy Collegiate Competition. Additionally, WPTO provides research funds for developers based on funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) and is providing funding for ocean deployments of high TRL devices at the PacWave South test site, when it is completed. New prizes and FOAs come out every year so keeping an eye on the WPTO website is a good funding practice.
TEAMER
With funding from DOE, the Pacific Ocean Energy Trust (POET) oversees the selection of projects in the Testing Expertise and Access for Marine Energy Research (TEAMER) program, helping developers access technical support. A selected project is matched with experts in the field for development, modeling, and testing; or provided access to certified testing facilities like wave tanks. The final goal is to create consistent testing protocols across facilities in order to advance the field as a whole. The application for support, or request for technical support (RFTS), opens on a 3-4 month cycle so this is a relatively rapid way to access expertise and testing facilities. One secret to the selection process is that the technical judges are looking for an idea that moves the new technology in the direction of the “next logical step of development.” If you don’t make the cut think hard and talk to others about what is the next logical step.
Site Selection
Both technology and project developers need to consider at which site to deploy. Technology developers need to consider the range of conditions under which the device will operate efficiently and project developers need to consider issues like distance to grid connections, transportation, and local permitting guidelines.
Available energy in a wave resource at a site is expressed in units of kilowatt per meter while a tidal resource is characterized in units of length per time, like meters per second, and duration. The international standards IEC TS62600-101 and -102 provide a step-by-step process for categorizing the wave and tidal energy at a specific site. Turning site specific data into a power matrix is an integral part of calculating power output from a device and thus economic viability.
Knowing the range of extreme conditions is necessary for choosing a site as they provide bounds to design principles and economic value. Under-design of a device can lead to catastrophic failures when faced with the extreme conditions of a storm. Similarly, over-design of a device can lead to over-investment in materials relative to the amount of power produced, which has led to the demise of more than one company.
Other concerns for project developers include questions like, what is the distance to the nearest port? That is where deployment will start and every transportation mile costs money. What is the distance to the nearest possibility of grid connection? This will determine how much cable you are going to buy and generally you pay by the foot or meter. Who controls the lines of the power grid and how do you attain access? The answer to this will involve the local electrical utility and FERC permitting. Who are the other users of the ocean in the vicinity? Stakeholder engagement may include fisherman, tribal governments, the Navy, other local governments and landowners. Are there shipping lanes near the projected deployment? Are there any endangered or protected species living in, or migrating through, the area of the deployment? All these questions and others, specific to your site, are part of the site selection process.
Resource Characterization Project
DOE’s Water Power Technology Office has been involved in multiple resource characterization projects for the coastal United States which have been collected and curated as PRIMRE’s Resource Characterization Signature Project. The goal of the project is to refine, extend, and disseminate the data necessary for marine energy device engineering and project planning. The project is organized around five primary activity areas: wave modelling and analysis, tidal current modelling and analysis, resource characterization and classification, resource measurement, and data dissemination. Resources linked here include characteristics of the U.S. wave energy test sites (e.g. PacWave South), high resolution wave hindcast data for Hawaii and the west coast of the U.S., and tidal hydrodynamic models for the coast and inlets of Alaska.
Marine Energy Atlas
The Marine Energy Atlas is an interactive mapping tool to explore potential for marine energy resources. This tool provides researchers and commercial entities the ability to easily visualize and download class-leading datasets which can be used in a wide variety of project planning, device development or marine operations tasks. The Atlas hosts high resolution data on marine energy resources, such as the WPTO Wave Hindcast Dataset. The Atlas allows users to:
- Visualize or preview data before downloading
- Subset data easily to an area of interest or a particular year for download
- Download data for entire regions or multiple years using the large-scale data option on the Data Downloader
- Leverage in-app processing through the Capacity Factor Tool: estimate the capacity factor (the ratio of time-averaged power generation to the maximum power generation), using wave height from the WPTO Wave Hindcast Dataset and user-uploaded power matrices of wave energy converters.
Marine Energy Environmental Toolkit
After choosing potential deployment sites based on wave or tidal resources the regulatory environment must be considered. In the United States the Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), as well as state regulations, can all affect staging and deployment of marine energy devices. Consult with your local regulatory bodies early in your project.
The Marine Energy Environmental Toolkit was designed to provide a one-stop location for information on environmental effects and permitting. It combines the most recent curated environmental papers from PRIMRE, geospatial data from NOAA’s Marine Cadastre, examples of NEPA biological assessments (BAs) from historical projects, and historical marine energy licensing documents from FERC into a searchable interface. Searches are done using tags for environmental stressors and receptors and references can be saved in a downloadable report.
Stakeholder Engagement
The process of stakeholder engagement should begin early in the project and continue during the entire project because getting to know the community and local stakeholders near a potential deployment site is necessary for a success. The goal is to educate and build trust in the community affected and benefited by the deployment; this is most easily done with transparent, consistent communication. Stakeholders can include local governments, businesses, fisherman, tribal governments, community groups, people who use the area recreationaly (i.e. surfers, sailors) environmental groups, and interested community members.
Marine renewable energy projects are still new and poorly understood by most of the public and each stakeholder may have differing concerns. How will the project affect fishing, endangered species, port development, waves for surfing, shipping, beach sand transport, or the view-scape? Helping them to understand the nature of marine energy devices and their installation can alleviate some concerns. Describing the expected benefits of renewable energy is a good start and presenting examples of successful installations, or unsuccessful deployments, will help to provide a vision of the range of possible outcomes. But maintaining open lines of communication and working to listen and understand the community’s concerns are the most important aspects of stakeholder engagement.
Benefits of engagement and trust can become visible in the permitting process. An adaptive management plan, developed with regulators and stakeholders, and used during deployment and operations can be less onerous and more flexible than a proscriptive regulatory plan. Adaptive management is a structured approach to making environmental decisions in uncertain conditions, emphasizing the use of new information. With stakeholders believing in the project and accepting the uncertainty involved with off-shore development, environmental monitoring data collected during deployment can be used to inform and redirect development, rather than shut it down.
Lack of community engagement and education can be a serious problem for a project. More than one project has failed because developers walked into a community and simply told everyone what they were planning to do. Projects have failed even after going through extensive regulatory compliance, including environmental modeling and endangered species monitoring, when the community voted to prohibit development, or stakeholders refused to trust the development.
Be sure to budget for stakeholder engagement meetings when planning a project. An internet search will provide numerous links to more information and consulting companies experienced in stakeholder meetings.
Standards for Planning
The establishment of international standards assist in mitigating the technical and financial risks associated with the diverse range of technology concepts that currently exist in the marine energy industry, enabling a quicker uptake of commercial systems. The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) work together to promote world-wide cooperation on equipment design and operation in the field of marine energy, as well as many others. To this end the IEC and ISO publish international standards, technical specifications, guides, and other reports to further knowledge. Standards are produced with the consensus of national committees, international, governmental, and non-governmental organizations. These standards represent an international consensus of opinion on their subject matter, in this case wave, tidal, and river resource assessments.
Links below provide an abstract for the standards and a link for purchase from the IEC. A full list of standards of interest to marine energy projects can be found at PRIMRE’s Standards page
IEC Standards
- Marine Energy Resource Assessment IEC TS 62600-101
- Tidal Energy Resource Assessment IEC TS 62600-201
- River Energy Resource Assessment IEC TS 62600-301
Lessons Learned
The PRIMRE team has conducted semi-structured interviews with marine energy subject matter experts to collect Lessons Learned from past and present marine energy research, development, and deployment projects. The summary of this information aims to ensure that knowledge is not lost, past mistakes are avoided, and hard-won successes are capitalized on. Please note that 50% of these topics have to do with the business and economic side of marine energy development.