Diversifying Investments in NC Offshore Renewable Energy Technologies

The oceans around the world provide opportunities for renewable energy production while reducing long-term carbon emissions. In the last decades, several offshore energy technologies have been analyzed, such as tidal, wave, ocean current turbines, offshore wind farms, and more recently offshore solar plants. Most ocean energy technologies are still conceptual or in the early development stages, with some prototypes available. One exception is offshore wind power, which has been successfully implemented in countries such as England, Germany, Netherlands and Denmark and recently in the US. Recently the U.S. federal government announced plans to lease areas for offshore wind deployment in the North Carolina coast, including a 122,000-acre site of the ocean off the Outer Banks, what shows promising opportunities for investments in this technology in the state. The goal of this project is to identify optimal resource portfolios that consider multiple offshore renewable energy sources. To achieve this goal, we will enhance the portfolio optimization framework we developed during the previous fiscal year and apply it to multiple offshore renewable sources off the North Carolina coast, including offshore wind, wave, and Gulf Stream current energy. The intent is to provide two deliverables: (1) an analysis that demonstrates how different renewable resources can be deployed in a cost-optimal configuration off of the North Carolina coast, and (2) a modeling tool that will be made available to investors and researchers. Evaluating the cost-effectiveness of marine energy technologies will be critical to external proposal efforts and eventual technology deployment.

DeCarolis, J.F. (PI), de Queiroz, A.R. (co-PI), Diversifying Investments in NC Offshore Renewable Energy Technologies, Funded by the UNC Coastal Studies Institute, Renewable Ocean Energy for North Carolina Program, 2017-2018

Portfolio optimization of Gulf Stream, wave, and offshore wind sites, with capacity factor plotted as a function of variance in the aggregate monthly output (MWh/month)2. Individual sites across the study domain are shown as red points (Gulf Stream), blue dots (wave) and purple ´s (offshore wind), Stage 1 portfolio results with only linear constraints as blue triangles, and Stage 2 portfolio results with integer constraints as green triangles.

Optimal portfolios for Gulf Stream only, wave only, and the combined portfolio as a function of the capacity factor target. The use of multiple resources enable the efficient frontier consisting of optimal generation portfolios to achieve a given capacity factor target with less variance in monthly energy production.