A Floating Offshore Wind Energy Platform to Power Autonomous Underwater Vehicles for the Great Lakes Monitoring

Background

• The Great Lakes are one of the world’s largest surface freshwater sources (~84% of the North America's surface fresh water)

• The environmental challenges threat the quality of water and ecosystem of the lakes.

• These challenges require efforts to constantly monitor and forecast the impact of stressors.

• The sampling process of the lakes is almost halted in the winter due to harsh weather conditions.

Innovation

• We propose a new floating offshore wind platform in the Great Lakes to power surveying AUVs for monitoring and observation in the lakes.

• The platform can be a docking and charging station to supply power for these AUVs even during the winter.

• The platform can also generate power for other monitoring and observation devices (e.g., weather forecast, ice monitoring, wave measuring and other related systems and devices).