Signature Projects

Signature Projects are intended to bring focus to a selection of U.S. Department of Energy's Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) projects. By designating a Signature Project, the project reports, datasets, and associated papers can be easily discoverable. By bringing together all aspects of a project, whether a completed legacy project or an ongoing investigation, the MRE community can be informed of what investigations have been undertaken, which have succeeded, what tools are available, and where gaps in information persist.

WPTO projects that are featured as Signature Projects are those for which project outputs are scattered across platforms or are difficult to find; or where the formal project has ended but papers are continuing to accrue. Many of these Signature Projects will be of interest internationally, feature key lessons that have been learned, and may have been the result of collaborations by multiple organizations.

Project Description
WEC-Sim WEC-Sim (Wave Energy Converter SIMulator) is an open-source software, developed in MATLAB/SIMULINK, for simulating wave energy converters.
Reference Model The Reference Model Project (RMP) was a partnered effort to develop open-source marine hydrokinetic (MHK) point designs as reference models to benchmark MHK technology performance and costs, and an open-source methodology for design and analysis of MHK technologies, including models for estimating their capital costs, operational costs, and levelized costs of energy.
Sandia WEC Co-Design Sandia National Laboratories' WEC (Wave Energy Converter) Co-Design project focuses on transitioning control design approaches from simplified paper studies to application in full-scale devices.
Marine Energy Resource Assessment and Characterization Marine Energy Resource Assessment and Characterization is a multi-lab project that builds on earlier WPTO-funded resource characterization efforts and is organized around four primary activity areas: wave modelling and analysis, tidal current modelling and analysis, resource characterization and classification, and resource measurement.
Wave Energy Prize The U.S. Department of Energy Wave Energy Prize was an 18-month public design-build-test competition that aimed to double the state-of-the-art performance of wave energy converters (WECs).
MHKiT MHKiT (Marine and Hydrokinetic Toolkit) is an open-source marine renewable energy (MRE) software, developed in Python and MATLAB, that includes modules for ingesting, quality controlling, processing, visualizing, and managing data.
TEAMER The Testing Expertise and Access for Marine Energy Research (TEAMER) program aims to accelerate the viability of marine renewables by providing access to the United States’ best facilities and expertise in order to solve challenges, build knowledge, foster innovation, and drive commercialization.
MRE Cybersecurity In order to increase cybersecurity awareness within the MRE industry, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office funded Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to develop guidance documents that describes a cybersecurity risk framework for MRE developers and end users to integrate security best practices into the MRE system lifecycle.
UMERC The University Marine Energy Research Community (UMERC) program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and coordinated by the Pacific Ocean Energy Trust, is an inclusive network of university, laboratory, and industry research whose aim is to reduce duplication, increase knowledge sharing, and ensure that applied and foundational research aligns with the needs of the industry.