Clean Energy Technologies

Wind Power Applications and Technologies Team

Virginia Coastal Energy Research Consortium

In August 2006 an Act of the Virginia General Assembly passed the landmark "Virginia Energy Plan" which establishes a foundation for the research and development of future renewable energy resources.

The Virginia Coastal Energy Research Consortium (VCERC) was established in Chapter 6 of the Virginia Energy Plan. The VCERC was created to "serve as an interdisciplinary study, research, and information resource for the Commonwealth on coastal energy issues" with an initial focus on offshore winds, waves, and marine biomass.

As is mandated in the Virginia Energy Plan, the research focus for the Virginia Coastal Energy Research Consortium is on offshore winds, waves and marine biomass. This has been broken down into four major work projects:

  1. Feasibility-Level Design and Economic Assessment for a Reference Baseline Offshore Wind Power Project (VT-ARI)

  2. Preliminary Mapping of Offshore Areas Suitable for Offshore Wind Development, with Identification of Excluded Areas to Avoid Potential Conflicts, and Mapping of Offshore Benthic, Pelagic and Avian Habitats (JMU, VIMS)

  3. Evaluation of Economic Development Impact of Commercial Offshore Wind Power Development and Associated Workforce Training and Entrepreneurial Development Needs, and Preliminary Planning for Ocean Test Bed (NSU)

  4. Feasibility-Level Design and Economic Assessment for a Biodiesel Algae Culture System (ODU)

Each project involves multiple universities in a collaborative effort with a lead university identified for each of the collaborations (listed above).

MAP

WPATT at James Madison University has taken a leading role in the mapping efforts.  The objective of the mapping project is to map the offshore wind energy resource off Virginia’s coast, as well as identifying excluded areas to avoid potential conflicts with other ocean users, including U.S. Navy training and exercise areas, U.S. Coast Guard designated shipping lanes, commercial fishing grounds, and other potentially incompatible uses (sand and gravel mining, dredge spoil disposal, archeological and other scientific research sites, etc.).  We will also prepare GIS layers that show the distribution of offshore benthic biological communities, marine mammal sightings, and avian habitats (migratory shorebird flyways and pelagic seabird counts). These data will be used in the feasibility study and later by stakeholders as an online tool to understand the impacts of offshore wind farms on Virginia’s coastal and offshore environment and coastal industry.

Most data used in this mapping project was gathered from public sources.  View more information on these data sources.

Researchers