From Wind to Waves: Exploring challenges and potential for Great Lakes marine energy resources to contribute towards Blue Economic initiatives

Despite many challenges faced by the industry, marine renewable energy (MRE) promises to contribute substantially to a diverse energy technology portfolio across the globe. Here in the US, near-term interest has shifted away from utility-scale MRE development towards local energy production for Blue Economic initiatives such as powering observation systems, desalination equipment, aquaculture activity, remote communities, disaster recovery, and more. There is considerable interest in exploring the wave energy resource on the Great Lakes following international IEC standards, in part to extend analysis of available energy resources in the US, but also to serve as a testing ground for developers targeting Polar region MRE deployments. One challenge pursuing the Great Lakes MRE analysis is that surface observation buoys are only deployed for 8 months of the year, often missing some of the largest wave events across the region. Ongoing efforts at UMN Duluth focus on a) developing low-cost, open-source observation buoys for both Great Lakes and inland water observations; b) developing a statistical characterization of seasonal wave resource availability; and c) exploring community scale wind energy technologies in cold, marine climates. This talk will dive into each of these three topics while emphasizing the need to sustainably use marine resources across the Great Lakes region and globe as MRE technologies accelerate their contribution towards energy demands.