Abstract
Ocean energy is a relevant source of clean renewable energy, and as it is still facing challenges related to its above grid-parity costs, tariffs intended to support in a structured and coherent way are of great relevance and potential impact. The logistics and marine operations required for installing and maintaining these systems are major cost drivers of marine renewable energy projects. Planning the logistics of marine energy projects is a highly complex and intertwined process, and to date, limited advances have been made in the development of decision support tools suitable for ocean energy farm design. The present paper describes the methodology of a novel, opensource, logistic and marine operation planning tool, integrated within DTOceanPlus suite of design tools, and responsible for producing logistic solutions comprised of optimal selections of vessels, port terminals, equipment, as well as operation plans, for ocean energy projects. Infrastructure selection logistic functions were developed to select vessels, ports, and equipment for specific projects. A statistical weather window model was developed to estimate operation delays due to weather. A vessel charter rate modeling approach, based on an in-house vessel database and industry experience, is described in detail. The overall operation assumptions and underlying operating principles of the statistical weather window model, maritime infrastructure selection algorithms, and cost modeling strategies are presented. Tests performed for a case study based a theoretical floating wave energy converter produced results in good agreement with reality.
Highlights
The decarbonization of the energy sector is urgent, requiring global action to achieve our long-term climate goals and to mitigate the impacts of climate change [1]
Computational tools can be distinguished according to (i) decision-making time-scale, (ii) project phase, (iii) target sector, (iv) licensing type, and (v) software functionalities
The present paper describes in detail the novel Logistics and Marine Operations tool, one of the seven design modules of the DTOceanPlus software
Summary
The decarbonization of the energy sector is urgent, requiring global action to achieve our long-term climate goals and to mitigate the impacts of climate change [1]. Computational tools can be distinguished according to (i) decision-making time-scale (long-term strategic planning based on historical weather data, or short-term daily operational planning based on weather forecasts), (ii) project phase (installation, O&M, and decommissioning), (iii) target sector (offshore wind, ocean energy, or both), (iv) licensing type (open-source, private, or commercial), and (v) software functionalities (e.g., weather window modeling, operation planning, infrastructure selection, failure/degradation modeling, revenue modeling, and techno-economic assessments). At a project development phase, integrating preliminary plans for the installation, maintenance, and decommissioning in the design process has the potential to reveal unexpected impacts of certain component design decisions on logistic costs This is a important step for ocean energy projects as less mature technologies have higher cost-optimization potential, frequently achievable with simple concept adjustments.
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