Competing Use Analysis for Offshore Renewables and Subsea Cables
Demand for abundant and diverse resources in the oceans is growing, necessitating marine spatial planning. To inform development of Marine Hydrokinetic (MHK) and Offshore Wind (OSW) resources, the Department of Energy (DOE) has asked NREL to identify the competing uses areas between promising MHK/OSW sites and submarine power and telecommunications cables. The first step in this work is to identify and quantify the overlap between the MHK/OSW resource availability and existing cable routes.
The analysis is done in terms of resource area because the task of quantifying actual impacts on available resource is a non-trivial undertaking that involves subjective decisions of identifying resource opportunities. Quantifying overlap in-terms of resource area?on the other hand?is significantly more straight forward, and useful to marine spatial planners.
This dataset of polygons describes recommended setback areas from submarine cables for marine renewable energy Development. Two archive files are provided:
1. NREL Cables Setback-Polygons.zip contains the following GeoJSON files:
1.a. cables_100ft.geojson: The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR 585.301) specifies that the legal right of way for submarine cables is 100 ft (~30 meters) to either side of the cable (i.e., 200 ft wide).
1.b. cables_2z.geojson: The International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) of the North American Submarine Cable Association (NASCA) recommends setback distances for new facilities as the maximum of 500 m or twice the bottom depth (2z), per ICPC Recommendation 13 No. 2 (Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council IV 2014). For depths 250 m, 2 * depth is to be used.
1.c. cables_3z.geojson: The ICPC of NASCA recommends setback distances for new cables as the maximum of 500 m or three times the bottom depth (3z), per ICPC Recommendation 2 No. 10 (Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council IV 2014). So for depths 167 m, 3 * depth is to be used.
2. NREL Submarine Cable Analysis Code Data Presentations.zip contains all files (code, data, README, etc) from release 0.1 of this Github repository for possibly regenerating the product as submarine cable configurations change: https://github.com/ecoquants/nrel-cables.
For more details, please see the link to the full report for which this data product is a supplemental output:
Submarine Cable Analysis for U.S. Marine Renewable Energy Development
by Ben Best and Levi Kilcher
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Citation Formats
TY - DATA
AB - Demand for abundant and diverse resources in the oceans is growing, necessitating marine spatial planning. To inform development of Marine Hydrokinetic (MHK) and Offshore Wind (OSW) resources, the Department of Energy (DOE) has asked NREL to identify the competing uses areas between promising MHK/OSW sites and submarine power and telecommunications cables. The first step in this work is to identify and quantify the overlap between the MHK/OSW resource availability and existing cable routes.
The analysis is done in terms of resource area because the task of quantifying actual impacts on available resource is a non-trivial undertaking that involves subjective decisions of identifying resource opportunities. Quantifying overlap in-terms of resource area?on the other hand?is significantly more straight forward, and useful to marine spatial planners.
This dataset of polygons describes recommended setback areas from submarine cables for marine renewable energy Development. Two archive files are provided:
1. NREL Cables Setback-Polygons.zip contains the following GeoJSON files:
1.a. cables_100ft.geojson: The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR 585.301) specifies that the legal right of way for submarine cables is 100 ft (~30 meters) to either side of the cable (i.e., 200 ft wide).
1.b. cables_2z.geojson: The International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) of the North American Submarine Cable Association (NASCA) recommends setback distances for new facilities as the maximum of 500 m or twice the bottom depth (2z), per ICPC Recommendation 13 No. 2 (Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council IV 2014). For depths 250 m, 2 * depth is to be used.
1.c. cables_3z.geojson: The ICPC of NASCA recommends setback distances for new cables as the maximum of 500 m or three times the bottom depth (3z), per ICPC Recommendation 2 No. 10 (Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council IV 2014). So for depths 167 m, 3 * depth is to be used.
2. NREL Submarine Cable Analysis Code Data Presentations.zip contains all files (code, data, README, etc) from release 0.1 of this Github repository for possibly regenerating the product as submarine cable configurations change: https://github.com/ecoquants/nrel-cables.
For more details, please see the link to the full report for which this data product is a supplemental output:
Submarine Cable Analysis for U.S. Marine Renewable Energy Development
by Ben Best and Levi Kilcher
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
AU - Best, Benjamin
A2 - Kilcher, Levi
DB - Marine and Hydrokinetic Data Repository
DP - Open EI | National Renewable Energy Laboratory
DO - 10.15473/1561978
KW - MHK
KW - Marine
KW - Hydrokinetic
KW - energy
KW - power
KW - submarine cables
KW - setbacks
KW - polygons
KW - technology study
KW - submarine cable analysis
KW - GeoJSON
KW - competing use analysis
KW - modeling
KW - offshore
KW - renewables
KW - subsea cables
KW - renewable energy
KW - NREL
LA - English
DA - 2019/08/29
PY - 2019
PB - National Renewable Energy Laboratory
T1 - Competing Use Analysis for Offshore Renewables and Subsea Cables
UR - https://doi.org/10.15473/1561978
ER -
Best, Benjamin, and Levi Kilcher. Competing Use Analysis for Offshore Renewables and Subsea Cables. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 29 August, 2019, Marine and Hydrokinetic Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.15473/1561978.
Best, B., & Kilcher, L. (2019). Competing Use Analysis for Offshore Renewables and Subsea Cables. [Data set]. Marine and Hydrokinetic Data Repository. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. https://doi.org/10.15473/1561978
Best, Benjamin and Levi Kilcher. Competing Use Analysis for Offshore Renewables and Subsea Cables. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, August, 29, 2019. Distributed by Marine and Hydrokinetic Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.15473/1561978
@misc{MHKDR_Dataset_314,
title = {Competing Use Analysis for Offshore Renewables and Subsea Cables},
author = {Best, Benjamin and Kilcher, Levi},
abstractNote = {Demand for abundant and diverse resources in the oceans is growing, necessitating marine spatial planning. To inform development of Marine Hydrokinetic (MHK) and Offshore Wind (OSW) resources, the Department of Energy (DOE) has asked NREL to identify the competing uses areas between promising MHK/OSW sites and submarine power and telecommunications cables. The first step in this work is to identify and quantify the overlap between the MHK/OSW resource availability and existing cable routes.
The analysis is done in terms of resource area because the task of quantifying actual impacts on available resource is a non-trivial undertaking that involves subjective decisions of identifying resource opportunities. Quantifying overlap in-terms of resource area?on the other hand?is significantly more straight forward, and useful to marine spatial planners.
This dataset of polygons describes recommended setback areas from submarine cables for marine renewable energy Development. Two archive files are provided:
1. NREL Cables Setback-Polygons.zip contains the following GeoJSON files:
1.a. cables_100ft.geojson: The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR 585.301) specifies that the legal right of way for submarine cables is 100 ft (~30 meters) to either side of the cable (i.e., 200 ft wide).
1.b. cables_2z.geojson: The International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) of the North American Submarine Cable Association (NASCA) recommends setback distances for new facilities as the maximum of 500 m or twice the bottom depth (2z), per ICPC Recommendation 13 No. 2 (Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council IV 2014). For depths 250 m, 2 * depth is to be used.
1.c. cables_3z.geojson: The ICPC of NASCA recommends setback distances for new cables as the maximum of 500 m or three times the bottom depth (3z), per ICPC Recommendation 2 No. 10 (Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council IV 2014). So for depths 167 m, 3 * depth is to be used.
2. NREL Submarine Cable Analysis Code Data Presentations.zip contains all files (code, data, README, etc) from release 0.1 of this Github repository for possibly regenerating the product as submarine cable configurations change: https://github.com/ecoquants/nrel-cables.
For more details, please see the link to the full report for which this data product is a supplemental output:
Submarine Cable Analysis for U.S. Marine Renewable Energy Development
by Ben Best and Levi Kilcher
National Renewable Energy Laboratory},
url = {https://mhkdr.openei.org/submissions/314},
year = {2019},
howpublished = {Marine and Hydrokinetic Data Repository, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, https://doi.org/10.15473/1561978},
note = {Accessed: 2025-05-28},
doi = {10.15473/1561978}
}
https://dx.doi.org/10.15473/1561978
Details
Data from Aug 29, 2019
Last updated Jun 1, 2020
Submitted Aug 30, 2019
Organization
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Contact
Ben Best
805.705.9770
Authors
Keywords
MHK, Marine, Hydrokinetic, energy, power, submarine cables, setbacks, polygons, technology study, submarine cable analysis, GeoJSON, competing use analysis, modeling, offshore, renewables, subsea cables, renewable energy, NRELDOE Project Details
Project Name Competing Use Analysis for Offshore Renewables and Subsea Cables
Project Lead Hoyt Battey
Project Number FY17 AOP 2140401
