Abstract
Northwest Energy Innovations (NWEI), Naval Facilities Engineering Command’s Expeditionary Warfare Center (NAVFAC/EXWC), University of Hawaii’s Hawaii National Marine Renewable Energy Center (HNMREC) and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are working collaboratively to deploy and test NWEI’s half-scale multi-mode wave energy converter (NWEI Device). These tests will take place at the NAVFAC and HNMREC 30-meter Wave Energy Test Site (WETS) at the Kaneohe Marine Corps Base Hawai‘i (MCBH) on the windward (northeast) coast of the island of O‘ahu. The site is located northeast of Heei’a Kea Small Boat Harbor and is within the security zone of MCBH. The WETS 30m Site was engineered and installed as part of a previous wave energy program. As described in the Site Report1 (Appendix A), it is grid connected to MCBH through terrestrial and subsea cables that begin at the control room in Battery French and terminate offshore at the 30m Site. These cables will be used during deployment of the NWEI device, however, because of differences between the NWEI device and the device previously deployed at the WETS 30m site, NWEI can’t use most of the grid interconnection, control, and monitoring equipment remaining at Battery French from the previous project and will install its own equipment. Also, the umbilical cable system used to connect the device is not available from the previous wave energy project, so new equipment will be provided by NWEI. This report describes the existing equipment at the 30m WETS, an assessment of grid interconnection options for the site, and a description of the equipment that NWEI plans to install at the site.