GIS based Techno-Economic Site Assessment Tool

In order to site marine renewable projects a wide range of stakeholders will need to understand the driving considerations for siting projects in certain areas. Marine renewable energy sources include; (1) wave energy, (2) offshore wind, (3) ocean current, and (4) ocean thermal energy conversion. These resources are stimated to be able to provide a significant portion of the US national demand for electricity and hence are strategically important. Constraints, involve a wide range of environmental and human use constraints as well as the sites economic attractiveness. Different spatial planning efforts have been aimed at addressing the marine spatial planning issues. One of the more prominent ones is the Multi-purpose Marines Cadastre (MMC). What is missing with all these data-sets is the ability to determine a sites commercial potential in a meaningful way. While some of the data-sets provided in the MMC can be used by device developers to perform such studies, there is no adequate way to determine the commercial potential of deployment areas. RE Vision is proposing to develop an easy to use GIS-based techno-economic scenario-modeling tool that allows users to characterize the commercial potential of a particular site or larger geographic areas. It will do so by utilizing the experience gained over the past decade in developing such scenarios for a wide range of clients. This toolbox development is a direct extension of past modeling efforts undertaken by the PI.