Floating offshore wind farms could potentially triple the Pacific Northwest's wind power capacity while offsetting billions of dollars in costs for utilities, ratepayers, insurance companies, and others.
Two renewable energy approaches—enhanced geothermal systems and floating offshore wind energy—get new focus as Energy Earthshot™ Research Centers at PNNL.
Recognizing how innovation and clean technologies at the very edge of the grid can work together to transition the electricity system, PNNL takes a multidisciplinary approach to advancing and integrating renewable energy solutions.
Two PNNL studies that describe the potential value of offshore wind off the Oregon Coast and distributed wind in Alaska were published in the journal Energies.
PNNL has received 119 R&D 100 Awards since 1969, when the laboratory began submitting entries in the contest that recognizes top 100 inventions each year.
PNNL has paired one of its offshore wind research buoys with its ThermalTracker-3D technology to correlate avian activity with ocean and weather conditions off the California coast.
A special issue of the Marine Technology Society Journal, titled “Utilizing Offshore Resources for Renewable Energy Development,” focuses on research and development efforts including those at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).
PNNL researchers say that offshore wind energy can add value to the electric grid, beyond just the power it can produce, if locations and strategies are optimized.
PNNL deployed two research buoys in waters off the West Coast for the first time in deep water, supporting a DOE and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management effort to gather measurements that support offshore wind locations and technologies.
PNNL is managing the Data Archive and Portal, which provides the wind research community with secure, timely, easy, and open access to all data brought in from research under DOE’s Atmosphere to Electrons program.
Mama and calf humpback whales—considered a vulnerable species that might be entangled in underwater equipment—star in a new animation video that depicts the marine mammals’ scale and movements relative to floating offshore wind farms.