The project is designed to quantify and classify the physical conditions of wave and tidal resources, to provide classification schemes that reduce design costs and generation uncertainty, and to provide the data necessary for informed siting decisions. These outcomes also relate to the program’s other goals. First, detailed resource data helps to focus the locations where environmental research and risk mitigation is most needed. Second, improved resource models provide test-sites with better predictions, and classification schemes are a critical input to efficient test-site test protocols that evaluate both device performance and device reliability. Finally, high-fidelity resource models can be used as input to device simulation tools, to produce device simulations output that is based on realistic time-histories of resource conditions.
