New WPTO-Funded Laboratory Projects

The Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) enables research, development, and testing of emerging technologies to advance marine energy as well as next generation hydropower and pumped storage systems for a flexible, reliable grid. In fiscal year 2018, WPTO initiated a number of new research projects at the U.S. Department of Energy's national labs to support the continued development of innovative water power technologies that lower costs of development while ensuring that long-term sustainability and environmental issues are addressed.

Hydropower Projects

Real-time, Autonomous Water Quality Monitoring System

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will advance state-of-the-art dissolved oxygen measurement platforms to support monitoring and improving environmental performance of hydropower systems. Better water quality measurement data for models and monitoring can be used by dam operators and turbine designers to minimize water quality impacts, maximize generation or flexibility of hydropower operations, and evaluate technologies that address and improve water quality.

Irrigation Modernization

Idaho National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will partner to evaluate hydropower's potential to enable and enhance the modernization of U.S. agricultural irrigation systems. The team will look at existing irrigation modernization projects through the lens of renewable energy and water use efficiency stakeholders to determine research and development needs that could unlock greater economic, energy, and water security potential.

Nontoxic Coatings for Invasive Organisms at Hydropower Facilities

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will conduct research into durable, economical, and nontoxic coatings that will prevent invasive mussels and other organisms from growing on hydropower structures. Left uncontrolled, the organism growth can disrupt operation, impede water flow, and diminish the power output of hydropower dams. The environmentally friendly anti-biofouling coatings could be applied to many designs or scales—including irrigation systems and canals—and could be applied to new projects and retrofitting existing facilities.

Advanced Manufacturing for Hydropower

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will identify hydropower components that could be suitable for advanced manufacturing techniques like additive systems (e.g., 3D printing), advanced welding techniques, robotics and automation, and embedded sensors. Because advanced manufacturing in hydropower is in an early stage and there are no publicly available resources with hydropower-focused advanced manufacturing opportunities, the team will conduct a gaps analysis and write a strategy document with a path forward for the hydropower industry.

Marine Energy Projects

Load Analysis for Variable Geometry Wave Energy Converters

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory will investigate next-generation power maximizing, load-shedding wave energy converters with variable geometry control strategies that reduce costs of handling powerful loads due to the fluctuating nature of waves. The team will look at wave energy device architecture—focusing on a fixed-bottom oscillating surge wave energy converter—to explore economically viable designs that maximizes energy production and minimizes hydrodynamic loading in extreme seas.

WEC Array Power Management and Output Simulation Tool

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory will create a publicly accessible numerical modeling toolset to empower the wave energy sector to design projects of various scales, which are optimized on a plant performance basis and are compatible with different power systems and wave conditions. This design and analysis toolset will integrate with analysis tools like WEC-Sim, SWAN-FUNWAVE (a wave environment model), PLEXOS, REOpt, or DER-CAM to model the grid system and interconnection, forecast short-term power output, and optimize power output and power management for WEC arrays. The project will assist the marine energy industry in designing optimized systems—including a similar toolset for tidal and river/ocean current energy plants—that meet grid interconnection and operation requirements.

Environmental Data Analysis and Coding Competition

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will develop a competition to find solutions that reduce the time and costs associated with analyzing environmental monitoring data of marine energy technology deployment and operations. Rapid, reliable, and automated data analysis has the potential to reduce uncertainties regarding any potential environmental impacts, facilitate more efficient permitting for marine energy deployments, and contribute to the advancement of the industry.

Umbilical Cable Design Requirements and Best Practices

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will accelerate the development of robust and cost-effective umbilicals (medium voltage power and communication lines that connect floating WECs to subsea transmission lines). As conventional marine umbilicals for offshore oil and gas and offshore wind often do not meet the design and cost needs of wave energy technologies, the team will produce an umbilical design basis for U.S. test centers, an assessment with design recommendations to lower levelized costs of energy, and produce umbilical heath monitoring methods to accelerate deployments, reduce costs, and increase reliability.

Instrumentation Guidance and Open Source Processing Software Tools

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories will develop tools that can be adopted by the marine energy industry to secure high-quality data and reduce costs and timelines for laboratory and field scale testing. Testing is crucial to collect system and component performance data, but due to the complex nature of marine energy devices and harsh ocean environments, conducting experimental tests remains challenging. Implementing tools and best practice guidance will facilitate standardization throughout the industry, promoting increased confidence in testing results and deployment of marine energy systems.

Grid Value Proposition of MHK

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will explore different benefits that marine hydrokinetic developments could have on grid reliability and resiliency, on an intermediate-to long-term horizon. Due to the early stage of marine renewable energy, its commercial value proposition to the electric system is not well understood or defined. Information from this project will enable the marine energy industry to articulate additional value to potential investors and customers. System planners, utilities, and decision makers will also be better able to evaluate marine energy when considering a suite of available generating resources in the future.

WEC Design Optimization

Sandia National Laboratories will create a hybrid optimization system that simultaneously improves design approaches and controls of existing WEC concepts to overcome costly iterative design/build/test approaches. Technology innovators and developers will be able to efficiently analyze performance potential (i.e., once the concept has undergone maturation and detailed design), leading to an optimal maturation pathway for major wave energy systems.

Flexible Material WEC

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory will identify, verify, and provide a pathway to achieve economic viability and competitiveness of wave energy as demonstrated by a wave energy converter archetype applied to the large-scale continental grid electricity market. By using new flexible materials for wave energy converter technologies in combination with distributed power conversion systems, the research team will evaluate the advantages the material to help devices reach commercial and cost-competitive maturity.

DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) supports early-stage research and development of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies that make energy more affordable and strengthen the reliability, resilience, and security of the U.S. electric grid. For more information on water power research, development, and testing see the EERE Water Power Technology Office's website.