– Advancing Environmental Monitoring Technologies for Floating Offshore Wind

The purpose of this solicitation is to fund applied research and development projects that support the 2021 Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC) Interim Investment Plan initiatives 8b. “Inspection and Monitoring Systems for Floating Offshore Wind (FOSW) Applications” and 8c. “Environmental Research for FOSW Development.” Projects resulting from this solicitation will advance environmental monitoring technologies to support efforts by FOSW operators, state agencies, and other relevant entities to better evaluate potential biological and ecological implications of FOSW deployments. It is anticipated that FOSW will provide a valuable resource for achieving the clean energy goals of Senate Bill 100 (De León, Chapter 312, Statutes of 2018) and for supporting grid reliability. Additionally, Assembly Bill 525 (Chiu, Chapter 231, Statutes of 2021) requires the California Energy Commission to develop a strategic plan for offshore wind energy developments in federal waters off the coast of California and establish megawatt planning goals for 2030 and 2045. In 2021, the Departments of the Interior and Defense and the state of California announced an agreement to advance areas for FOSW energy development off the northern and central coasts. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has since identified specific areas as the Humboldt Wind Energy Area (WEA) and Morro Bay WEA, which together have the potential to generate over 4 GW of offshore wind energy. In the context of California’s FOSW technical potential of 201 GW and technical feasible capacity of over 21 GW in five areas of study, these two WEAs will enable important first steps in building out a significant domestic clean energy resource. The anticipated development and deployment of FOSW on the California coast will require evaluation of a diverse array of potential environmental impacts, such as changes to marine life populations, habitat, oceanic processes (e.g., upwelling, nutrient flux), and collision and entanglement risks. , The potential impacts from such installations are not well documented and will require site-specific evaluations at the WEAs due to the novelty of both these floating installations and their interaction with California ecosystems. Current environmental monitoring technologies face limitations in temporal and spatial resolution and coverage, accuracy, and durability needed to adequately represent the risks and impacts. Additionally, continuous monitoring and data collection may be needed to better understand risks from FOSW to natural resources and wildlife.7 Experts have raised concerns that the need for effective monitoring will require large volumes of data, leading to some research in machine learning and managing extremely large datasets. Such monitoring may require extensive power compared to existing systems used for short-term or intermittent monitoring studies.