A research team from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory will share best practices from their experience instrumenting structures operating in harsh underwater environments, and their experience trying to obtain structural loads data on a deployed marine energy device. Additionally, the webinar will address the following topics:

• Why data acquisition for marine energy is difficult
• Options for strain measurements on operational tidal turbines
• Learning from wind: how to model, spec, install, calibrate, and analyze strain gage data on deployed tidal turbines
• Lessons learned from the deployment of a data acquisition system on an operation tidal turbine.

Until recently, no one had experimented with a range of different techniques for instrumenting subsea components, and it’s difficult to find best practices and guidelines to use. Collecting data in a marine environment requires attention to detail for engineers and technicians. Failure of any one component can lead to failure of the entire system so all parts need to be specified and installed with proper procedures. The research team will share what equipment, techniques, and tools worked for this project, as well as the things that didn’t work and what can be improved in the future.