Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory expanded the capabilities of their open-source modeling tool to enable simulation of marine energy turbines to help optimize technology designs.
Water Power Technologies Office
March 14, 2024
minute read time
Marine Energy Program
Technology-Specific System Design and Validation
Project Name: Tidal Modeling: Numerical Development for Marine Turbines in OpenFAST
Project Team: National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Lead Recipient Location: Golden, Colorado
In Fiscal Year 2023, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) researchers added new features to the simulation tool OpenFAST. Once for use only by wind turbine developers to advance wind turbine designs, OpenFAST's new capabilities enable marine energy turbine developers to simulate how much energy different versions of their designs might generate. The tool has already been used by several marine energy developers to predict loads on rotors (the rotating assembly on a turbine), check results they generated from commercial modeling tools, and better understand floating platform motions.
The team added new simulation capabilities, including the ability to assess buoyant loads (the force a fluid exerts on a submerged object). They also generalized the tool to evaluate a wider range of both fixed and floating marine turbine designs to make it easier and faster for developers to optimize their technology designs. NREL researchers are now working to develop a floating marine turbine reference model to serve as a baseline case for industry and an example for users interested in the new capabilities.
Modeling tools have been key to technology growth in the wind energy industry, and as such, this tool can help accelerate the design of more innovative, cost-competitive marine energy technologies on the path to commercialization.
This work is supported through the Water Power Technologies Office's Powering the Blue Economy™ initiative.
NREL water power researchers (from left) Thanh Toan Tran, Hannah Ross, and Will Wiley work with OpenFAST, which helps developers simulate marine turbine performance.
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