Research Highlights

Borsetti, S., D. Munroe, A. Scheld, E. Powell, J. Klinck, and E. Hofmann (2023), Potential repercussions of offshore wind energy development in the northeast United States for the Atlantic surfclam survey and population assessment. Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science, 15:e10228, DOI:10.1002/mcf2.10228

Miles, T., S. Murphy, J. Kohut, S. Borsetti, and D. Munroe (2021), Offshore wind energy and the mid-atlantic cold pool: A review of potential interactions, Mar. Technol. Soc. J., 55(4), 72–87, DOI:10.4031/MTSJ.55.4.8

Brodie, J., Kohut, J., Zemeckis, D. 2021. Partners in Science Workshop: Identifying Ecological Metrics and Sampling Strategies for Baseline Monitoring During Offshore Wind Development.

Hugh Roarty, Scott Glenn, Joseph Brodie, Laura Nazzaro, Michael Smith, Ethan Handel, Josh Kohut et al. “Annual and seasonal surface circulation over the Mid‐Atlantic Bight Continental Shelf derived from a decade of High Frequency Radar observations.” Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 125, no. 11 (2020): e2020JC016368.

Optis, M., Kumler, A., Brodie, J., Miles, T. (Feb 2021). Quantifying sensitivity in numerical weather prediction‐modeled offshore wind speeds through an ensemble modeling approach. Wind Energy. DOI: 10.1002/we.2611

Literature Review: Miles, T., Murphy, S., Kohut, J., Borsetti, S., Munroe, D. Dec. 2020. Could federal wind farms influence continental shelf oceanography and alter associated ecological processes? Science Center for Marine Fisheries.

Validation of RU-WRF, the Custom Atmospheric Mesoscale Model of the Rutgers Center for Ocean Observing Leadership. 2020. Golden, CO: National Renewable Energy Laboratory. NREL/TP-5000-75209

Greg Seroka, Erick Fredj, and Rich Dunk. March 2020. Analysis of Sea Breeze Types Using WRF and Lagrangian Methods: Update Using RU-WRF Configuration AquaWind, LLC

Josh Kohut, Joseph Brodie, Final Report on Partners in Science Workshop: Offshore Wind and the Mid-Atlantic Cold Pool, July 2019.

Archer, C. L., Wu, S., Vasel-Be-Hagh, A., Brodie, J.F., Delgado,, R., St. Pe, A., Oncley, S., Semmer, S. 2019. The VERTEX field campaign : observations of near-ground effects of wind turbine wakes. Journal of Turbulence. https://doi.org/10.1080/14685248.2019.1572161.

St. Pé, A., M. Sperling, J. F. Brodie, and R. Delgado. 2018. Classifying rotor-layer wind to reduce offshore available power uncertainty. Wind Energy. DOI: 10.1002/we.2159.

Veron, D. E., Brodie, J.F., Shirazi, Y.A., Gilchrist, J.R. 2018. Modeling the electrical grid impact of wind ramp-up forecasting error offshore in the Mid-Atlantic region. Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, 10(1):013308. DOI: 10.1063/1.4990684.

Rutgers Cooperative Extension Annual Conference | December 14, 2022
Josh Kohut, Douglas Zemeckis	What’s Happening With Offshore Wind Off New Jersey?

OSW LBIF | April 18, 2022
Josh Kohut, Joseph Brodie	Perspectives on Offshore Wind and the Environment from a Local Oceanographer and Meteorologist
IFISSH 2022 | February 14, 2022
Josh Kohut, Joseph Brodie	Fisheries Oceanography and Atmospheric Science
OSW Pinelands Preservation Alliance | February 10, 2022
Josh Kohut	An Oceanographer’s Perspective on Offshore Wind Energy and Our Ocean Planet
OSW JCNEER | February 9, 2022
Josh Kohut	Underwater robots help inform the deployment of offshore wind
MTS | October 5, 2021
Jaden Dicopoulos	Weather Research and Forecasting model validation with NREL specifications over the New York / New Jersey Bight
Stockton University for the New Jersey Environmental Lobby | October 5, 2021
Travis Miles	An Oceanographers Perspective on Offshore Wind and the Mid Atlantic Bight Cold Pool
Time for Turbines | Jan 27, 2021
Joseph Brodie	Technology for Understanding Offshore Wind and the Environment
Graduate Student Thesis Defense | Dec, 2020
Sarah Murphy	Mid Atlantic Bight: Coastal Upwelling & The Offshore Wind Environment
MARACOOS Online Webinar | May 1, 2020
Josh Kohut, Joseph Brodie	Mid-Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy Update
Wind Energy Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst | Feb 20, 2020
Joseph Brodie	Offshore Wind Interactions with the Atmosphere and Ocean Environment
Big Data, AI & Blockchain, Business Network for Offshore Wind, Boston, MA | Sep 12, 2019
Joseph Brodie	Combining Observations and Modeling to Improve Wind Resource Assessment
Time for Turbines, Atlantic City, NJ | August 16, 2019
Joseph Brodie	Ocean Observing, The Environment, and Offshore Wind
2019 Rutgers Energy Institute’s (REI) 14th Annual Energy Symposium, Rutgers University, NJ | May 8th
Scott Glenn	The Power of Partnerships: Offshore Wind Energy, Environmental Awareness, and Shared Economic Success
2019 International Partnering Forum, New York, New York | April 10, 2019
Travis Miles, Scott Glenn, Joseph Brodie, Josh Kohut	NJ Offshore Wind Resource Modeling: The Power of Partnerships
AMS Annual Meeting Phoenix, AZ | January 8, 2019
Joseph Brodie, Dana Veron, Travis Miles, Brian Frei, Eric Allen	Utilizing Climatological Analysis to Improve Forecasting of Offshore Wind Ramps

Rutgers University Marine Field Station (RUMFS). Research and education facility located in the Mullica-Great Bay that has been operated by Rutgers since 1972. It is equipped with dry analytical laboratories, flow-through sea water laboratories, a marine railway, dive locker, docks and office space. This site also hosts atmospheric monitoring equipment operated and maintained by the Rutgers University Center for Ocean Observing Leadership (RUCOOL) described in detail below. RUMFS has five small vessels (15-24 ft) and two larger vessels. The R/V Rutgers, a 36’ Munson research boat, is used as a mobile lab. This vessel was delivered with a US Coast Guard COI and is rated for 20 passengers and 2 crew members. Outfitting includes a Universal Sonar Mount (USM) for use with their Rio Grande Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler, fore and aft davits, side boarding door, 5kw generator, and a Garmin 1040xs radar/plotter/sounder. The large cabin is equipped with A/C, forced air heat, a head compartment, and multiple workstations. The vessel is approved for operations funded by Orsted. The R/V ARABELLA is also operated out of RUMFS, which is a 48 ft. (14.6 meter) fiberglass research vessel built in 1996 by Duffy and Duffy Custom Yacht, Brookline, Maine. Designed for nearshore operations (i.e. coastal to 50 miles offshore), the vessel is capable of supporting a wide range of scientific needs such as trawling, grab sampling, diving, seismic profiling, coring, AUV operations, etc.

 

Haskin Shellfish Laboratory operates facilities located in Port Norris in Cumberland County, an operational shellfish research farm  in Green Creek, and a state-of-the-art shellfish hatchery and nursery facility on the Cape May canal in Cape May County. The lab’s locations are embedded within the shellfish fishing communities which are anticipated to have large vulnerability to impacts from overlap of fishing grounds and OSW lease areas. The Port Norris facility is a 19,000 sq. ft. facility on the Maurice River, a tributary of Delaware Bay. It has 8 well-equipped laboratories for investigations on ecology, microbiology, histopathology, physiology, cell culture, molecular diagnostics, biochemistry, molecular genetics and cytogenetics. Research laboratories are furnished with a variety of microscopes, including an image capture/analysis system, histological processing equipment, laminar flow and UV hoods, automatic gene sequencers (ABI 310 and Beckman CEQ 8000), several thermal cyclers, an MJ real-time PCR system, several DNA and protein gel electrophoresis and detection systems. The laboratory operates a 24 ft. Privateer with a semi-enclosed Delaware Cabin. Additional facilities include meeting rooms, a large seawater wet laboratory, cold rooms, algal culture facilities, docks and a dormitory. The research farm in Green Creek, is located on the shore of Delaware Bay, and has an adjacent intertidal oyster farm, a hatchery and algal culture facility, labs, running seawater, offices, and dormitory space. The hatchery facility in Cape May is located on the Cape May canal. The Cape May facility has 22,000 square feet of interior wet lab space with running filtered and raw seawater, large algal culture capacity, three large laminar flumes, and capacity for large-scale shellfish seed production.

 

The Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences, located at Rutgers-New Brunswick is home to the Center for Ocean Observing Leadership (COOL) which is the premiere ocean observing program in the world with expertise in satellite remote sensing, shore-based radar sampling, and marine robotics. The RU COOL Offshore Wind team develops and advances the science that informs decision-making around offshore wind, both at the state and national level. Ocean Gliders: COOL operates a fleet of autonomous underwater Slocum gliders that acquire ocean data and deliver it to shore via satellite in near real-time. Glider payloads can acquire data on ocean temperature, salinity, conductivity, depth, waves, currents, sediment, oxygen, pH, nitrate, phytoplankton and ocean optics, zooplankton and pelagic fish biomass, whale locations, and tagged fish/mammal locations. WIth Support from state, federal, non-profit, and private companies these gliders are currently being used to perform environmental assessments in wind lease areas off NJ. HF-Radar Surface Currents: COOL operates a CODAR HF-Radar network centered on the NY Bight. Hourly data publicly available on our web site includes surface currents along the entire NJ and Long Island coasts up to 90 miles from shore, and wave heights up to 20 miles from shore along NJ. Meteorological Station: A Coastal Metocean Monitoring Station, located adjacent to the Rutgers Marine Field Station in the Mullica-Great Bay, includes temperature, winds, pressure, precipitation, dew point and a SODAR site that acquires winds up to 200 meters. The met site includes a 12 meter tower as well as lower mounting points and surface space for new atmospheric observation platforms. Atmospheric Forecast: COOL runs a daily, real-time version of the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (RUWRF) allowing for the continuous development of a database of the modeled offshore wind  resource. Partnering with Rutgers Extension: COOL also collaborates with wind energy developers, including Atlantic Shores  and Orsted Ocean Wind on projects to better understand and protect the offshore environment. COOL does extensive outreach to and discussion with all offshore wind stakeholders through their Partners in Sciences workshops, focus groups and webinar discussions.

 

The Office of the New Jersey State Climatologist (ONJSC). Organized within the NJ Agricultural Experiment Station, the ONJSC provides climate services to meet the needs of stakeholders and decision makers throughout the state.  In addition to providing weather and climate expertise, the ONJSC operates the Rutgers NJ Weather Network (NJWxNet). The NJWxNet is a constellation of over 60 weather stations, each providing real-time observations of wind, temperature, precipitation and other atmospheric variables, some for more than 15 years. This mesonet currently includes approximately 20 stations at or within several miles of the coast.

 

Rutgers EcoComplex located in Columbus, NJ, is a nationally recognized clean energy innovation business incubator with a 30,000 square foot facility with labs, offices and tech scale up areas. It is dedicated to moving inventions from the lab to successful real-world applications and to promote New Jersey as a center for clean energy innovation and enterprises. Available resources include: access to faculty and on-site engineering expertise with high tech analytical equipment; technology scale-up and verification capabilities with specialized environmental facilities (indoor and outdoor); offers the Wind Ignite program providing business development assistance and mentoring, and access to entrepreneurial networking forums and workshops funded by Atlantic Shores, offshore wind developer; office and lab space at competitive rates and flexible terms; and is a designated “Soft Landings” program by the International Business Incubation Association for foreign clean energy businesses that need assistance to enter the US market and locate in New Jersey.

 

Rutgers Center for Energy Storage Research located at Rutgers New Brunswick-School of Engineering, is a technically diverse applied research group of faculty, research staff,  students who conduct the research, development and advancement of new energy storage devices enabled by advancements in materials science.

 

Rutgers Center for Remote Sensing & Spatial Analysis located at Rutgers New Brunswick – School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, manages the Mid-Atlantic Ocean Data Portal for the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean. The Portal is an online toolkit and resource center that consolidates the best available data on ocean resources and human use information and serves as a platform to engage all stakeholders in ocean planning from the five-state Mid-Atlantic region—putting all of the essential data and state-of-the art mapping and visualization technology into the hands of the agencies, industry and community leaders to make informed management decisions.

 

Laboratory for Energy Smart Systems, Rutgers Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation (CAIT) located at Rutgers New Brunswick School of Engineering, focuses on advancing scientific and engineering foundations for planning, designing, and operational optimization of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) and Demand Side Management. Initiatives that contribute to Rutgers Wind include: developing advanced load forecasting models for optimization and control applications; investigating   sizing,   locational,   and   operational   optimization   of   DER   and   micro-grids,   with applicability to large-scale grids; building modeling tools for wind farms; fuel cell, geothermal, combined heat and power (CHP) and other forms of generation; along with electric vehicles and energy storage. This includes an ongoing extensive 3-year study on energy storage, fuel cell and CHP, and design validation of micro-grid initiatives in New Jersey funded by NJ BPU.

 

Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station and Rutgers Cooperative Extension. NJAES provides a diverse range of research, extension, and education programs that serve the people of New Jersey. Included under the NJAES is Rutgers Cooperative Extension (RCE) which brings the wealth of knowledge from the University out to local communities in all 21 counties through science-based education programs. NJAES and RCE are uniquely positioned to conduct research and deliver educational programming to address the needs of a diversity of clientele during the development of offshore wind energy, including issues related to fisheries, coastal resource management, environmental stewardship, and economic and workforce development.

 

Advanced Materials and Structures Laboratories (AMS Labs)– located in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, Busch Campus in Piscataway.  AMS Labs specialize in the design, characterization, modeling, and lifecycle response of composite materials used for extreme environments, including aerodynamic loads, impact conditions, buckling, vibrations, and corrosive environments.  AMS Labs have developed computational tools and experimental expertise in the design optimization of wind turbines, platforms, and support structures.  The labs have unmatched capabilities on optimized material selection depending on extreme environments, multimodal damage, and fracture models to predict operational life span and service intervals.  AMS Labs have developed sophisticated hybrid algorithms (physical models coupled with artificial intelligence) to make informed decisions, with a limited number of experimental and test data, for material and structure optimization, collection of data, and assessment of structural response and damage.  The Laboratories’ prowess includes, but is not limited to, laminated (such as used in wind turbines), random architecture composites (polymer and metallic), and nanostructured materials.  Finally, in collaboration with the newly installed (Spring 2023) wind wall in the Buehler Aerospace Lab in Weeks Hall and several wind tunnels in the Mechanical and Aerospace Department (both facilities located on Busch campus), we investigate novel materials and damage initiation and evolution to assess life span of structures under aerodynamic loads and extreme environments.

 

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (MAE) Wind Tunnel – Engineering Building, Rutgers New Brunswick. Wind turbine rotor aerodynamic and aeroelastic experiments are conducted in a closed-circuit low-speed tunnel with a 71 cm × 51 cm test section. This tunnel is an Eiffel type tunnel with a contraction ratio of 10:1, and a maximum flow speed of 72 m/s. The wind tunnel experiments are also automated with a separate/dedicated NI cDAQ data acquisition system. The system is designed and programmed to automate the entire tunnel including fan velocity, angle-of-attack, and three multi-purpose voltage outputs. The major instrumentation include, but not limited to: 1) six VICON cameras, 2) a six-axis high-sensitivity load cell from AMTI to measure forces (lift, drag, side), and moments (roll, pitch, yaw), 3) two high-accuracy differential pressure transducers to measure the tunnel flow velocity at different locations, and 4) a single-point laser displacement sensor from MTI on a motorized traverse from Velmex.

 

Buehler Aerospace Laboratories, Weeks Hall, Rutgers New Brunswick.  This is a state-of-the-art facility for collaborative and interdisciplinary work on the design, manufacturing, and testing of aerospace systems.  The room has a 42′ x 33′ floor space, and is approximately two story high. Catwalk around the perimeter of the room allows for observations.  There are eight VICON Vantage V5 cameras with custom 5 Megapixel sensors capable of 420 FPS full frame capture. The laboratory also houses a dedicated Dell HPC workstation to run the VICON system, and for data acquisition, and data storage. In addition, dedicated mechanical and electrical tools, a battery charging station, and work benches and stools are also included in the space. The laboratory is equipped with pressurized air, hot and cold water, and high-voltage supplies.

 

The Smart Systems Laboratory, Engineering Building, Rutgers New Brunswick.  Model-scale wind turbine fabrication and diagnostics take place in a fully dedicated and fully equipped laboratory space. The laboratory hosts all equipment necessary for the model-scale experiments involving the mechanical and electrical domains, and for the pre-experiment activities such as fabrication and calibration.

 

Gas Dynamics Research Lab, Engineering Building, Rutgers New Brunswick.The experimental aerodynamics research team at Rutgers is equipped with the following diagnostics equipment: (1) Photron Fastcam SA-Z camera with a pixel resolution of 1025 x 1024 pixels at 12-bits; the maximum frame rate is 2.1 million frames per second at a binned resolution, and a minimum exposure time of 159 ns; (2) LaVision Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry with a 200 mJ/pulse, double-pulsed, 15-Hz Nd:YAG laser and a pair of SCMOS 2560 x 2160-pixel, 16-bit cameras; (3) ATI Delta 6-component load cell with maximum loads of 660 N and 30 N-m; (4) ISSI High-Speed pressure-sensitive paint with a response of 20-kHz. Additional resources include LabVIEW cDAQ, Kulite pressure sensors, and a pair of SRS DG-535 Digital Delay Generators.

 

HPC Cluster, Engineering Building, Rutgers-New Brunswick. The core of the School of Engineering computing  consists of the computerized instructional labs and high performance computational (HPC) linux cluster. DSV and EIT instructional computer labs have 110 desktops equipped with AMD Ryzen 7  8 Core 4.7 GHz CPUs, and 32 GB of RAM. The desktops are running Linux and Windows 10 operating systems, and have the engineering applications installed, including compilers, Matlab, Comsol, Ansys, Siemens NX, SolidWorks, Tecplot. SOE HPC linux cluster hardware is based on combination of nodes with Intel Sandy Bridge 2670, Ivy Bridge 2670v2, Broadwell 2680v4, and AMD Epyc CPUs, and 128 GB of RAM per node for most of the nodes. There are 86 nodes in the cluster available for general use. There are also 60 nodes dedicated to several Engineering research groups. The nodes are interconnected over FDR 56Gbit infiniband and Gbit networks distributed cluster file system, BeeGFS, is available for parallel multi-node simulations. Software installed on the cluster includes compilers, OpenMPI, LAMMPS, Gromacs, Gaussian, Matlab, Comsol, CUDA.