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Press Release

Advancing Renewable Energy: Integral Awarded Funding from DOE for Open-Water R&D at PacWave

By Craig A. Jones, Ph.D., Managing Principal, Business Director, Marine, Coastal, Climate, and Technology Services
Samuel McWilliams, E.I.T., Consultant
Grace Chang, Ph.D., Senior Science Advisor, Technical Director, Marine Sciences and Engineering
Christopher Flanary, Ph.D., Consultant
Kaustubha Raghukumar, Ph.D., Senior Consultant
Frank W. Spada, Project Scientist
Timothy R. Nelson, Ph.D., Project Scientist

Integral Consulting was awarded funding for two innovative marine energy projects from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO). DOE awarded $25 million in funding spread over eight projects from various universities and companies, including Integral. The projects are expected to advance wave energy converter (WEC) systems, system components, environmental monitoring technologies, instrumentation and prognostic health monitoring systems, wave measurement systems, and other supporting technologies and will leverage PacWave, a wave energy test facility currently under development off the Oregon coast.

“We are excited to be working with the DOE and partners to accelerate marine energy technologies in the U.S.,” said Craig Jones, Ph.D., Integral Managing Principal. “All these projects work together to further the mission of generating new forms of clean, renewable energy and understanding the marine environment.”

Integral’s two projects involve advancement of environmental and prognostic health monitoring technologies using innovative acoustics technology to support effective monitoring and environmental data analytics to advance the marine energy industry as a whole.

An Integrated Data Tool to View Environmental Metrics

Integral is leading the project “An Environmental Data Integration and Assessment Tool for Supporting Marine Energy Adaptive Management Frameworks.” Partners include Pacific Energy Ventures, Kearns & West, and H.T. Harvey & Associates. This project aims to develop and demonstrate an environmental data integration assessment (EDIA) tool to support effective environmental monitoring and adaptive management frameworks for marine energy projects. The EDIA tool will serve as a central repository for all environmental data collected at PacWave. Integral team members include Sam McWilliams, E.I.T., Christopher Flanary, Ph.D., Grace Chang, Ph.D., and Craig Jones, Ph.D.  Additional author: Laura Mudge, Ph.D.

Conceptual diagram of the role of the EDIA tool in environmental monitoring.

This cloud-based system will promote an integrated assessment process that transparently serves developers, regulators, stakeholders, and the environment by allowing users to view all relevant environmental metrics on a single platform. Overall, this system can help developers get there faster for less money, by consolidating data to get the right information to make the best decisions.

A Library of Sound

Integral’s NoiseSpotter® uses acoustic pressure and particle motion sensors to characterize underwater sound.

Integral is supporting the second project “Towards Parametric Source Functions for Wave Energy Converters,” which is being led by the University of Washington (UW). Both Integral and UW developed complementary technologies for characterizing underwater noise at energetic wave energy sites through the DOE Triton initiative. Integral developed the NoiseSpotter®, a stationary system deployed on the seabed that uses acoustic pressure and particle motion sensors to characterize underwater sounds, including providing estimates of 3D bearings to sound sources. UW developed the Drifting Acoustic Instrumentation SYstem (DAISY), which is designed to take measurements of acoustic pressure while drifting along the ocean surface.

This project aims to leverage both technologies to create a library of acoustic events that will help WEC developers and regulators address concerns about sound from WECs. Researchers will take acoustic measurements at PacWave and then detect, localize, and identify sounds attributable to WECs. Integral team members include Kaus Raghukumar, Ph.D., Frank Spada, Timothy Nelson, Ph.D., and Grace Chang, Ph.D.

For more information on these projects, contact Craig Jones at cjones@integralcorp.com.