Development of an Adaptable Monitoring Package for marine renewable energy

The Adaptable Monitoring Package (AMP) along with a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) and custom tool skid, is being developed to support near-field (≤10 meters) and long-range monitoring of hydrokinetic energy converters. The goal for the AMP is to develop a system capable of supporting a wide range of environmental monitoring in harsh oceanographic conditions, at a cost in line with other aspects of technology demonstrations. This paper presents a system description of all related infrastructure for the AMP, including supported instrumentation, deployment ROV and tool skid, launch platform, and docking station. Design requirements are driven by the monitoring instrumentation and the strong waves and currents that typify marine renewable energy sites. Hydrodynamic conditions from the Pacific Marine Energy Centers wave test sites and Admiralty Inlet, Puget Sound, Washington are considered in the design as early adoption case studies. A methodology is presented to increase the capabilities to deploy and operate the AMP in strong currents by augmenting thrust and optimizing the system drag profile through computational fluid dynamic modeling. Preliminary results suggest that the AMP should be deployable in turbulent environments with mean flow velocities up to 1 m/s.