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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2017

Triton: Igiugig Fish Video Analysis (Project Report)

This document summarizes the analysis of video data collected around the Ocean Renewable Power Company’s RivGen® device in the Kvichak River during July and August 2015. Human (manual) analysis of the data was undertaken and used to develop automated algorithms to detect fish in the frames and describe interaction behavior. In addition, a web application, EyeSea, was developed to combine manual and automated processing, so that ultimately the automated algorithms could be used to identify where human analysis was needed (i.e., when fish are present in video frames). The aim of the project was to develop algorithms that could identify video frames with fish present that could then be used to enable faster manual analysis. However, the project has also identified recommendations for future data collection, and research that could help analysis and interpretation. The manual analysis started to look at all data from the start of the deployment; this was to ensure rare events were seen, and initially focused on night-time data when more fish were present. This process highlighted the amount of time taken to identify fish, and ultimately only 42.33 hours of video were reviewed due to the time-consuming analysis. The data were classified as ‘Fish’, when the reviewer was confident it was a fish, and ‘Maybe’ fish, when it was difficult to distinguish. This was based on the movement, shape and color characteristics. ‘Fish’ were further classified as ‘adult’, ‘juvenile’, or ‘unidentifiable’. Behavioral attributes were noted, which were broadly divided into passive and avoidance activities. In over 42 hours data, there were only 20 potential contact interactions, of which 3 were ‘Maybe’ classifications, 12 were juveniles and 5 were adults; on only one occasion was an actual contact confirmed, and this was an adult fish with the camera, not the turbine itself. This also highlights the difficulties associated with confirming a strike or collision event as occurring or being a near-miss. More interactions were detected at night; this was probably biased by nighttime artificial light use, which may have attracted fish, but also could have increased detection probability as the light is reflected from the fish itself. For the algorithm development, background subtraction, optical flow, and deep learning techniques were considered. The deep learning approach was determined as needing too much training data for this application, and therefore was not continued. The optical flow analysis was considered promising, but did not give immediate results, so would need further investigation. Therefore, background subtraction was the main focus. Three methods of background subtraction were tried: Robust Principal Components Analysis (RPCA), Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) and Video Background Extraction(ViBE). A classification technique was then applied to the foreground images to determine fish presence. Using this combination, it was found that fish could be accurately detected when occupying more pixels (>200 pixels, 98.2% correct; 100-200 pixels, 99.6% correct; 5-100 pixels, 85.4% correct; 2-5 pixels, 66.3% correct). In parallel, EyeSea was developed to convert the video data to a usable form and to enable manual and automated analysis of the data that would have a standardized output. Recommendations for further research, and standardized methods for data collection are given.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2016

Advanced Energy Harvesting Control Schemes for Marine Renewable Energy Devices

The Advanced Energy Harvesting Control Schemes for Marine Renewable Energy Devices (Project) investigated, analyzed and modeled advanced turbine control schemes with the objective of increasing the energy harvested by hydrokinetic turbines in turbulent flow. Ocean Renewable Power Company (ORPC) implemented and validated a feedforward controller to increase power capture; and applied and tested the controls on ORPC’s RivGen® Power Systems in Igiugig, Alaska. Assessments of performance improvements were made for the RivGen® in the Igiugig environment and for ORPC’s TidGen® Power System in a reference tidal environment. Annualized Energy Production (AEP) and Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) improvements associated with implementation of the recommended control methodology were made for the TidGen® Power System in the DOE reference tidal environment. System Performance Advancement (SPA) goals were selected for the project. SPA targets were to improve Power to Weight Ratio (PWR) and system Availability, with the intention of reducing Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE). This project focused primarily reducing in PWR. Reductions in PWR of 25.5% were achieved. Reductions of 20.3% in LCOE were achieved. This project evaluated four types of controllers which were tested in simulation, emulation, a laboratory flume, and the field. The adaptive Kω2 controller performs similarly to the non-adaptive version of the same controller and may be useful in tidal channels where the mean velocity is continually evolving. Trends in simulation were largely verified through experiments, which also provided the opportunity to test assumptions about turbine responsiveness and control resilience to varying scales of turbulence. Laboratory experiments provided an essential stepping stone between simulation and implementation on a field-scale turbine. Experiments also demonstrated that using “energy loss” as a metric to differentiate between well-designed controllers operating at an optimal tip-speed ratio set-point is difficult, which anticipated the outcome from field experiments. The clear message is that the feedforward Kω2 controller out-performs the feedback controllers in almost all aspects and modes of evaluation. The controllers proved a substantial improvement over the baseline performance of the TidGen® turbine, in terms of energy capture. The effects of noise-contaminated angular velocity signals were investigated and validated by simulation as an explanation for the performance limitations observed for TidGen® turbine operations in Eastport, Maine. Measurements of loads performed as part of the laboratory testing indicate that there are limited differences in average axial thrust force between control architectures. This suggests that none of the control strategies are likely to substantially affect loads on the turbine support structure. Velocity measurements during the ORPC RivGen® turbine deployment at Igiugig, Alaska, in 2014 were used to assess the variability of the river flow. Results suggest that the river flow is approximately steady, in the mean sense, at any particular location in the river, with random turbulent fluctuations that are around 10% of the mean flow. The mean flow in the center channel of the river is 2.5 m/s, with reductions near the riverbanks and in the shallows. Spectral analysis and lagged correlation results indicate that temporal fluctuations at a given point are dominated by large scale fluctuations, such that measurements at the turbine location are just as useful for inflow control implementation as upstream measurements. At this site, and likely at many other river sites, flow is generally steady at a given location, but flow varies dramatically between locations, particularly laterally across the river. The primary result is that a lateral change in position of a few meters results in changes to flow speed that far exceed the turbulence fluctuations at any given location. The turbulence is dominated by long time scales. Following final system tests, the RivGen® device was submerged and each evaluated controller was tested across a range of gain/set point values and filter configurations for a minimum of 5 minutes, with longer runs attempted for well-performing cases. In addition to testing controllers during the 2015 deployment season, LGL Alaska Research Associates Inc. (LGL) performed a fish monitoring study in compliance with Alaska Department of Fish and Game fisheries habitat permit for the project. During the season, LGL reviewed 10% of 179 one-hour blocks of footage (6 minutes on the hour) and documented a total of over 1200 fish in the vicinity of the RivGen® device, including over 800 salmon smolt and over 350 adult salmon. No evidence of adverse effects including passage delay by upstream migrating salmon was noted. This is an important result for future deployments and has a direct impact on commercial system designs.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2015

Development of a Numerical Wave Tank to Support WETS Activities, 3rd Marine Energy Technology Symposium (METS), Washington, D.C.

This paper outlines a suite of numerical methods developed to aid in the power prediction of Wave Energy Conversion (WEC) devices such as may be tested at the Navy's Wave Energy Test Site (WETS) in Hawaii. The NWT developed with the open-source OpenFOAM CFD solver has been successfully validated with well-known experimental data. Currently, work is in progress to combine drag data from CFD/SPH, WAMIT output and wave climate data at the site into a single time domain framework, to efficiently predict WEC power performance.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2024

Theoretical modeling of a bottom-raised oscillating surge wave energy converter structural loadings and power performances

Here, this study presents theoretical formulations to evaluate the fundamental parameters and performance characteristics of a bottom-raised oscillating surge wave energy converter (OSWEC) device. Employing a flat plate assumption and potential flow formulation in elliptical coordinates, closed-form equations for the added mass, radiation damping, and excitation forces/torques in the relevant pitch-pitch and surge-pitch directions of motion are developed and used to calculate the system's response amplitude operator and the forces and moments acting on the foundation. The model is benchmarked against numerical simulations using WAMIT and WEC-Sim, showcasing excellent agreement. The sensitivity of plate thickness on the analytical hydrodynamic solutions is investigated over several thickness-to-width ratios ranging from 1:80 to 1:10. The results show that as the thickness of the benchmark OSWEC increases, the deviation of the analytical hydrodynamic coefficients from the numerical solutions grows from 3% to 25%. Differences in the excitation forces and torques, however, are contained within 12%. While the flat plate assumption is a limitation of the proposed analytical model, the error is within a reasonable margin for use in the design space exploration phase before a higher-fidelity (and thus more computationally expensive) model is employed. A parametric study demonstrates the ability of the analytical model to quickly sweep over a domain of OSWEC dimensions, illustrating the analytical model's utility in the early phases of design.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Electrical properties of methane hydrate + sediment mixtures: The σ of CH 4 Hydrate + Sediment

Knowledge of the electrical properties of multicomponent systems with gas hydrate, sediments, and pore water is needed to help relate electromagnetic (EM) measurements to specific gas hydrate concentration and distribution patterns in nature. We built a pressure cell capable of measuring in situ electrical properties of multicomponent systems such that the effects of individual components and mixing relations can be assessed. We first established the temperature-dependent electrical conductivity (σ) of pure, single-phase methane hydrate to be ~5 orders of magnitude lower than seawater, a substantial contrast that can help differentiate hydrate deposits from significantly more conductive water-saturated sediments in EM field surveys. We report σ measurements of two-component systems in which methane hydrate is mixed with variable amounts of quartz sand or glass beads. Sand by itself has low σ but is found to increase the overall σ of mixtures with well-connected methane hydrate. Alternatively, the overall σ decreases when sand concentrations are high enough to cause gas hydrate to be poorly connected, indicating that hydrate grains provide the primary conduction path. Our measurements suggest that impurities from sand induce chemical interactions and/or doping effects that result in higher electrical conductivity with lower temperature dependence. Finally, these results can be used in the modeling of massive or two-phase gas-hydrate-bearing systems devoid of conductive pore water. Further experiments that include a free water phase are the necessary next steps toward developing complex models relevant to most natural systems.

03 NATURAL GAS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Detection and classification capabilities of two multibeam sonars

Multibeam sonars can be used to detect and classify marine fauna under conditions when optical sensors are ineffective. In this work, we compare the detection and classification capabilities of two multibeam sonars with different operating frequencies, the Tritech Gemini 720is (720 kHz) and the Teledyne BlueView M900-2250 (2250 kHz). The two sonars were deployed with overlapping swaths in a narrow tidal channel with peak currents of approximately 2 m/s where seals, schools of fish, and diving birds were intermittently present. In comparing data concurrently acquired by both sonars, we observe differences in the appearance of detected targets and detection capabilities. The detected target tracks are classified using a random forest model as either individual biological targets (flora and fauna, including fish, diving birds, seals, and plant matter), fish schools, or nonbiological targets (including entrained air and sonar artifacts). Despite the observed differences in detection capabilities for the two sonars, automatic classification distinguishes between target classes with precision and recall above 0.7 and 0.9, respectively. Furthermore, these results suggest that while similar methodologies can be used for data analysis, some outcomes from environmental studies using multibeam sonars may be instrument-specific.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2018

Shared autonomy for low–cost underwater vehicles

This field report presents an overview of the development and testing of a semi-autonomous underwater vehicle (sAUV). The work presented here is aimed at bridging the gap between current remotely operated vehicles and autonomous research platforms by developing shared autonomy capabilities for low-cost underwater vehicles. We use commercially available components and open-source software interfaces to provide a wider range of capabilities for underwater autonomy research at a lower cost than previously available systems. We describe the overall structure of the system, discuss its capabilities, and provide results demonstrating system performance. We place particular emphasis on shared autonomy, where a human operator is assisted in controlling an underwater tethered vehicle. We present three capabilities developed for the sAUV: (a) an assisted control mode that provides a variable level of assistance using an on-line estimate of user skill level, (b) a planner to generate paths that avoid tether entanglement, and (c) a sonar processing algorithm that identifies informative sonar images for selecting features for 3D scene reconstruction. Here, the vehicle has been deployed on five off-shore and near-shore marine field deployments since 2015, and this report includes selected results from four of those trials to demonstrate the capabilities and limitations of the sAUV system.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2026

Observations of the Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer’s Response to a Solar Eclipse

The atmospheric response to the solar eclipse of 8 April 2024 in North America is investigated with a specific focus on the marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL). We leverage measurements collected during the Third Wind Forecast Improvement Project (WFIP3), including Doppler lidars, sonic anemometers, and thermodynamic profiler data to investigate the atmospheric response across sites that experienced partial eclipse conditions with nearly 90% obscuration. Using these measurements, we examine eclipse-induced changes in key meteorological parameters, such as temperature, wind speed, and turbulent fluxes. Most previous eclipse studies have been conducted over land, whereas this study provides new observations for both coastal and marine environments, offering additional insight into eclipse-driven variability in the MABL. The findings confirm a notable decrease in downwelling shortwave radiation during the eclipse, which results in rapid cooling of surface air. The temperature reduction ranges from $1.2^\circ \text {C}$ to $1.4^\circ \text {C}$ in coastal regions and from $0.3^\circ \text {C}$ to $0.5^\circ \text {C}$ over the ocean. This analysis suggests that the MABL’s higher thermal inertia compared to coastal regions moderates the temperature decrease during the eclipse. Wind speed exhibits a more complex behavior, as it is influenced by both the MABL and preexisting synoptic conditions. Although a reduction in wind speed is observable up to approximately 140 m above ground level (AGL) at more inland sites, at other locations closer to the coast, this reduction is constrained to the lowest 100 m AGL. Turbulence parameters retrieved from sonic anemometers, such as turbulence kinetic energy, turbulent heat flux, and friction velocity, decrease during the eclipse at coastal sites, accompanied by a brief transition of atmospheric stability from unstable to neutral or weakly stable conditions. For the open-ocean sites, the variability in turbulence statistics and atmospheric stability is minimal during the occurrence of the eclipse.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2013

Input of 129 I into the western Pacific Ocean resulting from the Fukushima nuclear event

We present an initial characterization of the input of 129 I into the Pacific Ocean resulting from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident. This characterization is based primarily on 129 I measurements on samples collected from a research cruise conducted in waters off the eastern coast of Japan in June 2011. The resulting measurements were compared with samples intended to reflect pre-Fukushima background that were collected during a May 2011 transect of the Pacific by a commercial container vessel. In surface waters, we observed peak 129 I concentrations of ~300 μBq/m 3 which represents an elevation of nearly three orders of magnitude compared to pre-Fukushima backgrounds. The 129 I results were coupled with 137 Cs measurements from the same cruise and derived an average 129 I/137Cs activity ratio of 0.442 × 10 -6 for the effluent from Fukushima. Finally, we present 129 I depth profiles from five stations from this cruise which form the basis for future studies of ocean transport and mixing process as well as estimations of the total budget of 129 I released into the Pacific.

129 iodine↗
DOE OSTI2017

Characterization of the mean flow field in the far wake region behind ocean current turbines

Herein this paper forms, optimizes, and evaluates three numerical approaches for characterizing mean velocities in far wake region behind ocean current turbines. These approaches are derived from wake models originally developed for wind turbines and are referred here as the Larsen/Larsen, Larsen/Ainslie, and Jensen/Ainslie approaches based on the researchers originally credited with developing the expressions for dependence of the mean wake velocity on centerline and/or radial locations. The numerical coefficients utilized by these approaches are optimized to best match Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) generated wake velocity data. After optimizing the coefficients, this study finds that the Larsen/Ainslie and Jensen/Ainslie approaches best match the CFD generated flow data, with Larsen/Ainslie being the best match for an ambient turbulence intensity (TI) of 3% and Jensen/Ainslie being the best match for TIs of 6 and 9%.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2020

Physical, numerical, and computational challenges of modeling neutrino transport in core-collapse supernovae

The proposal that core collapse supernovae are neutrino driven is still the subject of active investigation more than 50 years after the seminal paper by Colgate and White. The modern version of this paradigm, which we owe to Wilson, proposes that the supernova shock wave is powered by neutrino heating, mediated by the absorption of electron-flavor neutrinos and antineutrinos emanating from the proto-neutron star surface, or neutrinosphere. Neutrino weak interactions with the stellar core fluid, the theory of which is still evolving, are flavor and energy dependent. The associated neutrino mean free paths extend over many orders of magnitude and are never always small relative to the stellar core radius. Thus, neutrinos are never always fluid like. Instead, a kinetic description of them in terms of distribution functions that determine the number density of neutrinos in the six-dimensional phase space of position, direction, and energy, for both neutrinos and antineutrinos of each flavor, or in terms of angular moments of these neutrino distributions that instead provide neutrino number densities in the four-dimensional phase-space subspace of position and energy, is needed. In turn, the computational challenge is twofold: (i) to map the kinetic equations governing the evolution of these distributions or moments onto discrete representations that are stable, accurate, and, perhaps most important, respect physical laws such as conservation of lepton number and energy and the Fermi–Dirac nature of neutrinos and (ii) to develop efficient, supercomputer-architecture-aware solution methods for the resultant nonlinear algebraic equations. In this review, we present the current state of the art in attempts to meet this challenge.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Household energy resilience in extreme weather events: An investigation of energy service importance, HVAC usage behaviors, and willingness to pay

Household energy resilience, particularly maintaining essential energy services within an acceptable and affordable level, is critical during extreme weather events (e.g., winter storms, heat waves) with power shortages or outages. However, the research on the importance and acceptable compromise levels of energy services, HVAC usage behavior changes, and willingness to pay (WTP) for energy services during disasters is limited. Therefore, this study investigates the importance and compromise of household energy services, HVAC usage behaviors, and WTP, as three key dimensions of household energy resilience, in both normal days and disaster scenarios through surveys (n=485). First, 12 common residential end-uses are grouped into high, mid, and low-priority services using hierarchical clustering, in which high-priority services (perceived as important and un-compromisable) include food cooking and storage (refrigerator and freezer) and thermal comfort (space heating and cooling), mid-priority services involve water heating and lighting, while low-priority services are mostly related to entertainment and housework (e.g., TV, laundry). Also, HVAC use patterns demonstrate that occupants become more energy conservative during disasters, e.g., reducing durations of running HVAC and adjusting temperature setpoints to save energy. In terms of energy cost, approximately 60% of respondents are willing to pay more to maintain energy services during disasters, although only 13% are prepared to pay over double the normal energy prices. The regression models further reveal that household energy resilience varies across different sociodemographic groups (e.g., age, income, family size) and is impacted by disaster experience and beliefs in clean energy and climate. In conclusion, these research findings provide important perspectives to understand household energy resilience and inform measures for disaster adaptation of households in extreme weather events.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2019

Wave tank and bench-top control testing of a wave energy converter

An increasing number of experiments are being conducted to study the design and performance of wave energy converters. Often in these tests, a real-time realization of prospective control algorithms is applied in order to assess and optimize energy absorption as well as other factors. This paper details the design and execution of an experiment for evaluating the capability of a model-scale WEC to execute basic control algorithms. Model-scale hardware, system, and experimental design are considered, with a focus on providing an experimental setup capable of meeting the dynamic requirements of a control system. To more efficiently execute such tests, a dry bench testing method is proposed and utilized to allow for controller tuning and to give an initial assessment of controller performance; this is followed by wave tank testing. The trends from the dry bench test and wave tank test results show good agreement with theory and confirm the ability of a relatively simple feedback controller to substantially improve energy absorption. Additionally, the dry bench testing approach is shown to be an effective and efficient means of designing and testing both controllers and actuator systems for wave energy converters.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2023

Integrated path planning and control through proximal policy optimization for a marine current turbine

This paper presents an integrated path planning and tracking control framework for a marine current turbine (MCT), where the MCT is treated as an energy-harvesting autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). Considering the ocean (space of action) is continuous, the proposed framework employs two modules to address path planning and path tracking enabled by the proximal policy optimization (PPO) algorithm, which is a policy gradient deep reinforcement learning (RL) method. Further, to enable fully autonomous operation in a stochastic oceanic environment, the proposed path planning seeks a primary objective of maximizing the harvested energy; then, the path tracking module is designed to minimize the tracking error and avoid collisions with static and dynamic obstacles. Using field-collected acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) data, the performance of the proposed framework is evaluated. Comparative studies with baseline algorithms in three different scenarios of path planning, path tracking without an obstacle, and path tracking with collision avoidance verify the effectiveness of our proposed approach.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2020

Shock-induced kinetics and cellular structures of liquid nitromethane detonation

Using a combination of high-speed diagnostics, optical pyrometry, velocimetry and video photography, we examine the spatiotemporal reaction kinetics of a prototypical high-energy explosive, liquid nitromethane (NM), as we drive this high explosive into detonation. The detonations were initiated by powerful shock waves whose durations (4 ns) were shorter than the characteristic time associated with the reaction (7 ns). Simple optical spectroscopy alone cannot characterize the kinetics with high time resolution because the reactants and products are flowing at a high velocity of ~6 km/s (6 µm/ns). Additionally, every detection volume behind the shock front contains material initiated over a range of times. High spatial resolution can be obtained by probing interfaces where the shock enters or breaks out of the NM. In addition, we obtain cellular patterns imprinted on the luminous shock front by the two-stage explosion in NM. These spatiotemporal patterns arise naturally as a result of the asymmetry produced by the moving shock front. In this way the shock front serves as a thin moving intrinsic optical gauge that reports and characterizes the two-stage NM explosion behind the front.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2012

The environmental interactions of tidal and wave energy generation devices

Global energy demand continues to grow and tidal and wave energy generation devices can provide a significant source of renewable energy. Technological developments in offshore engineering and the rising cost of traditional energy means that offshore energy resources will be economic in the next few years. While there is now a growing body of data on the ecological impacts of offshore wind farms, the scientific basis on which to make informed decisions about the environmental effects of other offshore energy developments is lacking. Tidal barrages have the potential to cause significant ecological impacts particularly on bird feeding areas when they are constructed at coastal estuaries or bays. Offshore tidal stream energy and wave energy collectors offer the scope for developments at varying scales. They also have the potential to alter habitats. A diversity of designs exist, including floating, mid-water column and seabed mounted devices, with a variety of moving-part configurations resulting in a unique complex of potential environmental effects for each device type, which are discussed to the extent possible. - Highlights: Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer We review the environmental impacts of tidal barrages and fences, tidal stream farms and wave energy capture devices. Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer Impacts on habitats, species and the water column, and effects of noise and electromagnetic fields are considered. Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer Tidal barrages can cause significant impacts on bird feeding areas when constructed at coastal estuaries or bays. Black-Right-Pointing-Pointer Wave energy collectors can alter water column and sea bed habitats locally and over large distances.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗