TEAMER: Engineering Design for Adaptable Environmental Monitoring Packages for Floating Tidal Turbines

Environmental monitoring of large-scale, floating current energy converters is challenging due to the size of the systems and operational challenges with deploying and operating sensing packages. Furthermore, each jurisdiction is generally expected to impose unique environmental monitoring requirements or recommendations based on legal frameworks and a range of other local/regional pressures. As a result, a universal approach to environmental monitoring that addresses the full range of requirements that might be encountered cannot be achieved. To enable developers to better plan for environmental monitoring needs this work consolidates several data products of use design and integration of sensors. These include, but are not limited to, CAD drawings that include the sensors and the field of view (if relevant); a calculator to determine electrical and communications (data) requirements for arbitrary sensing packages; recommendations for sensor placement based on practical experience and a review of monitoring goals; and examples of environmental monitoring packages and the approaches to deployment. This work is driven by large-scale, floating systems and constraints were driven by environmental conditions at three tidal energy sites in Washington State (USA), the Bay of Fundy (Canada), and in the Orkney Islands (Scotland).