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www.sname.org/sname/mt October 2012 THE EMERGING PLAYER Annex V: Exchange and Assessment of Ocean Energy Device Project Information and Experience Notably, Annex IV is to provide a collab- orative project under the IEAs Ocean Energy Systems Implementing Agreement (OES-IA) that will identify ongoing research and bring together data on the environmental eects of marine and hydrokinetic (MHK) energy development, analyze those data to under- stand eects, identify potential monitoring and mitigation strategies to address those effects, and share those results and data broadly.? Annex V was approved towards the end of 2011 and seeks to establish an exchange of data on all aspects of MHK energy devices, including testing, analysis, performance, and economic projections for four years. International cooperation among MHK developers, facilitated by the OES annexes, is critical to promoting information sharing and accelerating devel- opment of the MHK industry worldwide. In the U.S., the West Coast and Hawaii will have signicant wave device activity in the near future. Northwest Energy Innovations plans to test a 1:2 scale wave energy converter (WEC) at the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Centers test site off Newport, Oregon. Ocean Power Technologies plans to deploy their Powerbuoy 150 (150 kW) point absorber o Reedsport, Oregon, and this WEC will be the rst buoy of a planned 10-buoy array in that location. In Hawaii, the Department of Energy, Oce of Energy Eciency and Renewable Energy, Wind and Water Power Program has issued a fund- ing opportunity announcement entitled In-Water Wave Energy Conversion (WEC) Device Testing Support.? In conjunction with the Department of the Navy, the Department of Energy seeks to support the testing of a WEC device at the navys existing 30 m wave energy test site, located at Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe Bay. Design considerations Those active in the marine engineering/ naval architecture eld will nd the MHK industry to have a number of parallels to vessel and ship design as well as several unique design considerations. Service life. Marine and hydrokinetic device developers are targeting 20-plus years of service life in some of the worlds harshest conditions. ere is signicant institutional knowledge in corrosion control, coatings, fastener selection, and so forth from a myr- iad of marine industries and that knowledge transfer is well underway. Where there is less knowledge is guaranteed sustained operation of a device (often submerged) with minimal human intervention for years at a time. Vessels routinely come into dry dock for repairs and service, but some MHK devices will not have this option and this creates unique design challenges for MHK developers. Cost. Few products and technologies have the luxury of being developed where cost is not a concern. MHK devices are certainly no dierent. Costs of vessels are typically discussed in terms of their acqui- sition costs or capital expense (CAPEX) costs and lifecycle costs. In some cases, the acquiring agent may be dierent than the vessels operator, in which case there may be a focus on initial CAPEX reduction and less of an emphasis of economical opera- tion over the entire service life. e gure of merit used for power generating assets is the levelized cost of energy (LCOE), typically over a 20-year service life and expressed in dollars per kilowatt hour. Ultimately, the decision to buy an electrical generating asset is largely one of economics and one in which there is sti competition among vendors. Minimizing LCOE is a signicant design driver for MHK device develop- ers and performance tradeos and design optimization eorts are typically weighed in light of their potential LCOE impacts. Conditions and submerged life. Like ships and other marine systems and struc- tures that are designed in accordance with best practices, MHK devices invoke relevant design standards and safety criteria where applica- ble. Design guidelines or standards published by the American Bureau of Shipping, the American Petroleum Institute, the American Standard of Mechanical Engineers, the International Standards Organization, and many more are prevalent in the MHK com- munity. Because of the nascent nature of MHK, performance standards that help pro- vide meaningful and consistent comparison of devices to each other are not yet available. e International Electrotechnical Commission Technical Committee 114 group has been established to create design and performance standards. e standards are progressing with three separate technical specications due to be made available in 2012. ey include spec- ifications for both wave and tidal resource measurement and a terminology specication. e standards will be adopted after a several- month public review period and application of these specications. Mooring. Mooring systems pose unique challenges to MHK developers. e device FloDesigns mixer ejector hydrokinetic turbine.