Environmental monitoring for marine energy: instrumentation for devices and arrays

OES-Environmental and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are hosting a workshop at the 15th European Wave and Tidal Energy Conference (EWTEC 2023) on "Environmental monitoring for marine energy  – instrumentation for devices and arrays" on September 6 from 16:00-17:30 UTC.

As marine energy demonstration projects progress towards commercial arrays, the lack of certainty around the possible significance of certain potential environmental effects, coupled with challenges in applying learning from initial small-scale deployments to larger scale projects, continues to slow consenting, delay deployments, and impose expensive monitoring requirements. For several interactions with marine animals and habitats, monitoring the potential effects of marine energy devices and systems is challenging due to the remoteness of many project sites as well as deployment sites characterized by fast-moving and low visibility waters. While there is a growing range of instruments and data systems tailored specifically for observing marine energy interactions, many less-specialized oceanographic instruments are fit for purpose with specific calibrations, software, and/or integrated onto platforms that can be deployed on or near devices. Data acquisition systems are under development for measuring and controlling the power production data streams from marine energy devices, but most do not collect environmental monitoring data streams.

For certain interactions, there are no standardized instrument or data acquisition systems in use by the many different research groups and monitoring experts across the nations supporting marine energy project developers. Developing a suite of instruments and data acquisition systems that are appropriate for monitoring key interactions around marine energy devices will provide researchers and device developers tools for, respectively, acquiring data that will inform regulatory processes, and providing data to regulators to help accelerate those processes and manage risk and uncertainty proportionately.

This workshop will explore the most promising gear as well as work towards recommendations for preferred sets of instruments and data systems that will support consenting decisions and post-installation monitoring programs, as well as guidance on the proper use of monitoring systems for tidal and wave installations when considering key environmental interactions.