Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Offshore Wind Energy Center for Infrastructure Resilience, Control, Innovation, and Transmission (OWE-CIRCIT)

工程研究中心规划拨款竞赛是ERC项目的试点征集。规划补助金不需要作为ERC竞赛的一部分，但它旨在在团队之间建立能力，以规划聚合的、中心规模的工程研究。欧洲的海上风能（OWE）产业正在蓬勃发展，并已将发电成本降至每千瓦时不到0.10美元。美国的OWE资源是巨大的，可以提供全国电力需求的10-20倍。美国才刚刚开始开发这一资源，还没有为OWE提供工业供应链，而且由于飓风、复杂的海底条件和电网整合，美国面临着独特的挑战。为了应对这些挑战，并设计具有弹性和成本效益的重型OWE基础设施（例如，结构，传输系统），需要一种融合的方法。如果美国不能采取这种方法，制定相应的计划，最大限度地持续学习，并在必要时采取破坏性行动，那么美国社会将失去从美国广泛的专业知识和知识中受益的巨大机会，并取得具有广泛应用价值的技术进步。该ERC计划拨款项目将汇集来自多个工程学科、科学领域、国家实验室、州和联邦资源管理机构、工业利益相关者和开发商的相关专业知识；以及那些来自受影响沿海社区的人。该小组将设计一个数据驱动的多学科系统级框架，确定建立弹性基础设施（叶片、涡轮机、支撑结构、输电网、标准和模型）所需的进展，从而实现大规模和负责任的OWE收获。在这个框架内整合在一起的技术领域将包括但不限于海洋表征（风、波、流）、复合材料、空气动力学建模、地球工程参数、稳定性、疲劳、腐蚀、检查、控制、可再生能源整合、社会对OWE开发的接受程度，以及对海洋和沿海生态系统的影响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research.The Offshore Wind Energy (OWE) industry in Europe is booming, and has reduced electricity generation costs to less than $0.10 per kWh. The U.S. OWE resource is enormous, and could provide 10-20 times the national need for electricity. The U.S. is just starting to develop this resource, does not yet have an industrial supply chain for OWE, and there are unique U.S. challenges because of hurricanes, complex seabed conditions, and grid integration. In order to address these challenges, and to design resilient and cost-effective heavy OWE infrastructure (e.g., structures, transmission system), a convergent approach is needed. Failure for the U.S. to take this approach, to plan accordingly, to maximize continuous learning, and to take disruption actions when needed, would be a hugely missed opportunity for society to benefit from the breadth of U.S. expertise and knowhow, and to make technological advancements that have broad applications. This ERC planning grant project will bring together those with relevant expertise in OWE from several engineering disciplines, fields of science, the national laboratories, state and federal resource management agencies, industrial stakeholders, and developers; as well as those from affected coastal communities. This group will design a data-driven multi-disciplinary system-level framework that identifies where advances are needed to build a resilient infrastructure (blades, turbine, support structure, transmission grid, standards, and models) that would enable a large and responsible level of OWE to be harvested. The technical areas to be integrated together in this frame will include but are not limited to metocean characterization (wind, waves, currents), composite materials, aerodynamic modeling, geo-engineering parameters, stability, fatigue, corrosion, inspection, control, renewable energy integration, social acceptance of OWE development, and impact on marine and coastal ecosystems.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.