SUPERVISORY CONTROL AND DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM FOR ENERGY EXTRACTING VESSEL NAVIGATION

A Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system guides navigation of a vessel enabled to extract energy from wind and/or water currents primarily in offshore marine environments. An exemplary SCADA system could embody server and client software applications running on microprocessor systems at a remote control central service logging and energy distribution facility, and the vessel itself. The remote control service facility runs Human Machine Interface (HMI) software in the form of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) allowing choices to maximize system performance. The central server accesses information to control vessel position based on transmitted Global Position Satellite (GPS) data from the vessel, and weather information from the Geographic Information System (GIS) provided by multiple spatial temporal data sources. A server-side optimization algorithm fed the parameters delivered from vessel aerodynamic/hydrodynamic performance simulation software models, the vessel onboard sensor data, and integrated real-time weather and environmental data determines an optimal navigation through weather systems and presents choices to the HMI.