Wave and tidal energy arrays design tool DTOcean has been officially launched today as an open source software package.
The tool, released today, January 9, 2017, is said to assist project developers to design wave and tidal energy arrays by identifying optimal layouts, components and procedures.
DTOcean has been produced through a three-year collaborative project funded by the European Commission.
The project gathered 18 international partners including utilities, project developers, industrial suppliers and R&D organizations, under the coordination of the University of Edinburgh.
Henry Jeffrey , Coordinator of the DTOcean project, said: “Access to high quality design tools is a pre-requisite for reducing costs in complex engineering projects, such as such as wave and tidal arrays. With the world’s first ocean energy arrays now under construction, the launch of DTOcean is very timely.”
The DTOcean software package is available as a free download along with manuals and tutorials from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre website .
Given a set of user inputs regarding the chosen wave or tidal energy converter and array location, DTOcean can identify optimal layouts, balance of plant including specific components and logistics procedures for that array, it is stated on DTOcean’s project site.
Optimization is based on the levelized cost of energy (LCoE), and further feedback on reliability and environmental impact is provided.
The computational models being part of the software include hydrodynamic array layout, electrical system architecture, moorings and foundations, array installation, and operations and maintenance.