Arindam Banerjee

This report presents the literature review, end-user consultation, and data collection completed for AMEC Task 3.9.1, focused on the integrated techno-economic assessment of risk-averse offshore energy portfolios under resource and hurricane uncertainty along the U.S. East Coast. The review synthesizes current knowledge across six interdependent domains: marine energy technologies, mooring and anchoring systems, offshore electrical infrastructure, wind fragility of power infrastructure, environmental and ecological risks, and end-user modeling tools and data sources. Across these domains, the report identifies key technical opportunities and constraints for offshore wave, tidal, ocean current, and hybrid energy systems, including resource variability, device maturity, infrastructure costs, survivability, environmental siting limitations, and grid interconnection challenges. The review highlights that marine energy deployment analysis will likely require portfolio-based planning rather than single-technology evaluation, due to differences in resource profiles, technology readiness, infrastructure needs, and environmental constraints. It also identifies important gaps in site-specific performance data, cost modeling, fragility assessment, and integration of ecological and regulatory layers into planning tools.

Characterizing mean currents and turbulence is essential for assessment of tidal-stream energy resources, informing the design and classification of tidal energy converters (TECs), and reducing uncertainty in performance and structural load assessments. This study provides a comparative synthesis of turbulence conditions derived from acoustic Doppler velocimeter (ADV) measurements at six energetic tidal-stream sites, using a uniformly applied processing approach to enable commensurable inter-site evaluation. Key metrics relevant to international marine energy standards are assessed, including turbulence intensity, Reynolds stresses, turbulent kinetic energy, integral length scales, and velocity power spectra. The results demonstrate that energetic tidal channels span a broad range of turbulent regimes and designrelevant inflow conditions, covering multiple TEC type classes. Comparison with canonical boundary-layer scaling and widely used Kaimal and von Kármán spectral models shows systematic discrepancies in the energy-containing range, indicating that parametric spectra constrained only by field-estimated turbulence intensity and integral scales may not adequately represent site specific tidal turbulence. The analysis highlights the importance of standardized ADV post-processing methodologies and expanded turbulence observations across the water column to support reliable TEC design, certification, and the continued deployment of tidal-stream renewable energy technologies.