Water Research Data and Tools

The interactive map and geospatial data show closed-loop pumped storage hydropower supply curves, which characterize the quantity, quality, and cost of closed-loop pumped storage hydropower resources.

NREL developed a cybersecurity situational awareness tool for hydropower and other distributed energy resource-integrated grid networks to detect cyberattacks and enhance hydropower plant security and resiliency.

NREL developed the Cybersecurity Value-at-Risk Framework to evaluate the cybersecurity posture informing cybersecurity investment decisions, maintaining the security and cost-competitiveness of the hydropower fleet and improving its potential to contribute to a secure, reliable, and resilient grid.

The hydropower emulation platform uses the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems platform to provide control prototyping, evaluating, and validating of existing and novel hydropower technologies in a real-time environment using a hardware-in-the-loop approach.

The life cycle assessment of new closed-loop pumped storage hydropower facilities tool evaluates the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions associated with new, domestic closed-loop pumped storage hydropower facilities.

The Pumped Storage Hydropower Cost Estimation Tool can calculate cost and performance for specific development sites.

The RAPID Toolkit provides information about federal, state, and local permitting and regulations for renewable energy and transmission projects.

The ReEDS model has an industry-unique capability to include water resources as a constraint to future electricity development, and also has high geographic resolution.

The REPRA model on GitHub can be used to evaluate power plant vulnerabilities from various factors, including water.

The Marine Energy Atlas is an interactive mapping tool developed to explore potential for marine and hydrokinetic resources. The atlas depicts and maps U.S. wave energy, tidal, ocean, ocean thermal, and riverine current resources in the United States. Users can explore several variables in each of these mapped resource types using data layers. Dive into the Marine Energy Atlas on NREL's YouTube channel.

The Marine Energy Technology Development Risk Management Framework aims to help developers identify, manage, and respond to risks throughout the development cycle to support the advancement of new marine energy technologies and increase their chances for success.

Marine Energy Software is a knowledge hub on PRIMRE with a searchable online software discovery platform that allows users to perform faceted searches to identify software tools, codes, and other software products that they can use for MRE-related tasks.

Found on the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) OpenEI site, the Marine and Hydrokinetic Data Repository (MHKDR) hosts all MHK-related data generated from research projects and programs funded by DOE's Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO). It is home to more than 1,800 resources and more than 520 GB of data.

MHKiT is open-source software on GITHub, developed in Python and MATLAB, for rapid data processing, visualization, quality control, resource assessment, and device performance.

OpenFAST is a publicly available software that gives users the ability to model marine energy turbines and simulates the forces water exerts on a submerged tidal turbine during operation. The tool is helping advance the Powering the Blue Economy™ initiative by providing essential data for marine energy developers to understand how their devices might perform in open water.

The Portal and Repository for Information on Marine Renewable Energy (PRIMRE) provides centralized access to marine energy data and information, ranging from power performance data and environmental monitoring reports to device testing guidance and software code. The PRIMRE universe is made up of seven Knowledge Hubs in addition to other tools and resources that support the growing marine energy community.

The Small WEC Analysis tool, an online, publicly available on OpenEI graphical user interface, provides users with baseline information about the performance of different types of wave energy converters (WECs) in various ocean settings. Watch an informational webinar about the tool.

The Technology Performance Level Assessment tool evaluates the techno-economic performance potential of early-stage wave energy converter concepts.

Found on Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's site, Tethys hosts information and resources on the environmental effects of marine and wind energy development, including thousands of documents, educational resources, and online tools. Tethys also serves as the outreach and engagement platform for the international Ocean Energy Systems (OES) Environmental initiative. For more information on Tethys, check out the Tethys Fact Sheet.

Also on Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's site, Tethys Engineering hosts thousands of documents on the technical and engineering aspects of marine energy research and development, such as testing and design, power take-off systems, and cost assessments. Tethys Engineering also hosts a free-use photo library with hundreds of marine energy device photos. For more information on Tethys Engineering, check out the Tethys Engineering Fact Sheet.

Found on DOE's OpenEI site, Telesto contains open-source wiki pages and structured databases that provide information about the development life cycle of marine energy, including planning, designing and building, testing, deploying, and decommissioning. Telesto also contains information on lessons learned, metrics, economics, standards, and compliance.

Originally developed for the wind industry, TurbSim provides a numerical simulation of the fluid inflow to an energy device, including turbulence. Its purpose is to provide device designers with the ability to drive their design code simulations with simulated inflow turbulence environments that incorporate many of the important fluid dynamic features known to adversely affect the device response and loading on the equipment.

The WEC Design Response Toolbox on GitHub provides extreme response and fatigue analysis tools specifically for design analysis of ocean structures such as wave energy converters.

WEC-Sim is an open-source simulation tool on GitHub for wave energy converters. WEC-Sim has the ability to model systems comprising rigid bodies, power take-off systems, and mooring systems. The simulations involve solving the governing equations of motion in six degrees of freedom. WEC-Sim can now be used in conjunction with the MOST tool to also simulate floating offshore wind turbines.

The WPTO Wave Hindcast Dataset provides wave data spanning 1979–2020, which feeds into the Marine Energy Atlas and the Marine and Hydrokinetic Toolkit and can be accessed directly online or downloaded via Amazon Web Services.

The climate and water risk modeling and analysis framework and Water Risk Visualization and Analysis Tool evaluate how future climate and water conditions might impact power grid electricity generation assets and systems.

The REopt techno-economic decision-support platform recommends the optimal mix of renewable energy, conventional generation, and energy storage technologies to meet cost savings, resilience, and energy performance goals.

Water DAMS, funded by the National Alliance for Water Innovation, provides access to foundational water treatment technology data that enable researchers and decision makers to identify and quantify opportunities for technology innovations to reduce the cost and energy intensity of desalination.

WaterTAP, funded by the National Alliance for Water Innovation, is an open-source, Python-based software package that supports the technoeconomic assessment of full water treatment trains, and uses open-source models and data indexed in the Water DAMS platform. WaterTAP is available on GitHub with documentation.

The Jobs and Economic Development Impact (JEDI) models are user-friendly screening tools that estimate the economic impacts of constructing and operating power plants, fuel production facilities, and other projects at the local (usually state) level. Based on user-entered project-specific data or default inputs (derived from industry norms), JEDI estimates the number of jobs and economic impacts to a local area that can reasonably be supported by a power plant, fuel production facility, or other project.

Explore the Renewable Energy Discovery (REDi) Island, a web-based, educational application of a virtual world powered entirely by renewable energy. Home to hydropower, marine energy, and other renewable energy waystations, REDi Island offers technical information, career pathways, and educational resources to students, educators, and anyone interested in learning more about clean energy technologies and workforce opportunities. Also, check out the DOE REDi Island app.