Littoral Power Systems

To advance in-current marine and riverine hydrokinetic energy conversion through a step change in levelized cost of energy, Littoral Power Systems, Inc., and its partners propose to design, fabricate, and test a novel in-current hydrokinetic energy turbine device that imposes no net torque on the mooring. It is a submersed buoyant vehicle on a single flexible tether that flies a turbine up in the water column. The team will use a control co-design engineering framework to characterize and numerically optimize the system for minimized LCOE through three parallel activities: (1) minimize and balance key design-driving loads and trade active versus passive techniques to control dynamics on soft moorings; (2) analyze dynamic interactions among system components to determine where functions can be integrated and controls applied with greatest efficacy; and (3) analyze key cost drivers for deployment, retrieval, and operations to determine where marine robotics techniques can be integrated to have the greatest impact on lowering costs and/or increasing system availability.

Hydrokinetic energy is an abundant renewable energy source that presents unique opportunities and benefits.