U.S. Offshore Wind Standards aims to develop a comprehensive set of consensus-based roadmaps under ANSI/ACP (formally known as AWEA) rules which navigates the existing offshore wind standards and guidelines. This is to facilitate safe designs and orderly deployment of offshore wind in the United States by accounting for unique U.S. geophysics, administrative and environmental constraints and providing the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) with recommendations for industry best practice procedures.
From 2009 to 2012, the U.S. offshore wind industry, in collaboration with MMS/BOEM, NREL, DOE, and ACP, developed a roadmap from existing standards to facilitate the definition of “best practices”, which was titled AWEA Offshore Compliance Recommended Practice (OCRP) 2012.
AWEA OCRP 2012 no longer adequately addresses the regulatory requirements for BOEM/BSEE and the offshore wind development community. In September 2017, the AWEA Wind Standards Committee (later renamed the ACP Wind Technical Standards Committee) voted to approve the formation of the Offshore Wind Subcommittee to oversee the development of this initiative. This subcommittee was formed under the leadership of Walt Musial, Principal Engineer at NREL. Five working groups were formed to address the AWEA OCRP 2012 deficiencies.
Working Groups:
- Working Group 1 – Offshore Compliance Recommended Practices (OCRP) Edition 2 under the leadership of Rain Byars and Graham Cranston.
- Working Group 2 – US Floating Wind Systems Recommended Practices under the leadership of Lars Samuelsson and Leif Delp.
- Working Group 3 – US Offshore Wind Metocean Conditions Characterization Recommended Practices under the leadership of Mike Drunsic and Lorry Wagner.
- Working Group 4 – US Recommended Practices for Geotechnical and Geophysical Investigations and Design under the leadership of Matt Palmer and Mathieu Guinard.
- Working Group 5 – Recommended Practices for Submarine Cables under the leadership of Georg Engelmann and Bob Hobson.
Chair of ACP Offshore Wind Standards Subcommittee:
Walt Musial
Principal Engineer and Offshore Wind Lead National Wind Technology Center National Renewable Energy Laboratory Golden Colorado, USAWalt Musial is a Principal Engineer and leads the offshore wind research platform at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) where he has worked for 33 years. In 2003 he initiated the offshore wind energy research program at NREL which focuses on a wide range of industry needs and critical technology challenges. He chairs the ACP Offshore Wind Standards Subcommittee and is the Senior Technical Advisor to the National Offshore Wind R&D Consortium. Through the U.S. Department of Energy and with NREL’s strategic partnerships with industry and regulators, Walt is leading multiple research activities to build the knowledge base for U.S. offshore wind regional frontiers, which include the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of Maine, and the Pacific Ocean. Previously, Walt developed and ran NREL’s full scale blade and drivetrain testing facilities for 15 years. Earlier, Walt worked five years as a field test engineer in the commercial wind energy industry in California. He studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, specializing in energy conversion with a focus on wind energy engineering. He has over 120 publications and two patents.