The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) was recently selected by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) for a two-year, US$ 500,000 collaboration with the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) and Global Marine Group to develop solutions to address commercial fishing access in US offshore wind farms.
Through the “Collaborative Development of Strategies and Tools to Address Commercial Fishing” project, the team will gather direct input from active fishery participants and wind farm developers to collaboratively develop technical strategies and tools that help minimise the disruption of commercial fishing within offshore wind arrays.
The project kicks off in early 2020 and will progress in four phases over its two-year duration. In phase one, the team will work with fishery participants in the New York Bight to gather data, which will be used in phase two to develop wind project design, construction, and operation scenarios that will minimize access conflicts for fishing operations. Phase three will constitute a preliminary pilot study to evaluate select mitigation measures, and phase four will focus on sharing the project’s findings across all interested parties.
