Researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories made significant advancements to the data processing toolkit known as the Marine and Hydrokinetic Toolkit (MHKiT). Tools and software are essential to model and validate new technologies during their development. MHKiT helps fill this need with tools for data processing, visualization, quality control, and other activities.

Already capable of real-time data processing, standardization, and visualization, researchers collected industry feedback and added new features to MHKiT, including functions to download and process new types of data. MHKiT can now process data from the Coastal Data Information Program data repository for coastal environmental data. Researchers also implemented capabilities to process Simulating WAves Nearshore model data, allowing for increased insight into wave power in coastal regions.

Additions to this toolkit are designed to help the marine energy community accelerate learning and process more data from laboratory and open-water testing. With marine energy data more widely accessible to the industry, device design processes can be improved, paving the way for commercialization.