Pascal Van Hentenryck, A. Russell Chandler III Chair and Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech, will join the Department of Energy's Floating Offshore Wind Earthshots project: Addressing Challenges in Wind Energy: Floating Wind in a Changing Climate (ACE-FWICC). 

This initiative aims to drive innovation in eight clean energy technology sectors critical to decarbonizing the American energy system.

Van Hentenryck, also the Director of both Tech AI, at Georgia Tech and the NSF Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Institute for Advances in Optimization (AI4OPT), will provide guidance and expertise to the ACE-FWICC project's advisory board. The project seeks to reduce the cost of floating offshore wind energy through innovative scientific and engineering solutions.

ACE-FWICC brings together scientists and engineers who will apply a wide range of domain science expertise and complex models, combined with scientific machine learning, to develop scientific machine learning (SciML)-based surrogate models of different parts of the floating offshore wind turbine system. These simplified models will be merged into a holistic representation of the digital energy system, allowing researchers to (1) better understand how floating offshore wind resources will behave and (2) develop new strategies to reduce energy costs in current and changing climates.

Download: Floating Offshore Wind Shot Progress and Priorities report

Approximately two-thirds of U.S. offshore wind energy potential exists over waters too deep for fixed-bottom wind turbine foundations and requires floating platforms. Achieving the Floating Offshore Wind Shot goals will necessitate developing a robust domestic supply chain, reducing technology costs, and planning and building needed transmission, according to the Floating Offshore Wind Shot Fact sheet.

Between September 2022 and May 2024, DOE, DOI, and DOT dedicated over $950 million to advance the Floating Offshore Wind Shot. This support includes planning, leasing actions, research, development, demonstration, and deployment efforts through mechanisms such as direct federal investments, associated cost share, and lease-related bidding credits.

About ACE-FWICC Team

The ACE-FWICC team will answer basic science questions about the phenomena affecting floating offshore wind turbines while connecting traditionally separate efforts in diverse fields. The center’s research is organized around four themes that encompass the essential components of a digital energy system.

• Metocean Theme
• Turbine and Farm Theme
• Grid Theme
• SciML Digital Energy System Theme

To learn more, click here.