Abstract
Offshore energy, including wave, ocean current, and offshore wind energies, is underutilized. Many devices designed to harvest these energies exist. Coordinating the use of these offshore energy-harvesting devices has the potential to increase the maximum power able to be delivered to shore for a given levelized cost of energy constraint. Efficiently coordinating the deployment of these devices necessitates the use of a previously developed portfolio optimization framework. This framework determines the optimal suite of devices, and their optimal mapping such that the chosen suite of designs maximizes power for a given LCOE constraint. This portfolio optimization requires accurate input device models which have different sets of decision variables, resource inputs, constraints, and model fidelities, and designs may be developed using different software packages and programming languages. To address these issues, a generalized portfolio optimization framework has been developed. Within this updated framework is a uniform framework for cost and performance modeling implemented at the interface between device characterization and portfolio optimization; this accounts for differences in type and number of decision variables, specialized cost models, and power characterization structures. Moreover, a user interface was designed such that portfolio optimization can be available as an open-source tool for offshore energy analysis. Using this generalized framework, a test case focused on the optimization of a portfolio of devices for a domain off the North Carolina coast was performed using a variety of offshore energy-harvesting devices. Results utilizing this generalized framework validated its functionality.
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