Wind energy is among the leading technologies to meet the global clean energy goals for addressing climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions. As the market for onshore wind energy systems is maturing, development of offshore wind energy farms is emerging to be a new frontier for commercial deployment. US Great Lakes (USGL) represent a wind energy region that remains largely untapped. Given the direct access provided by the USGL to large population centers and significant transmission capacity across the Midwest and the northeastern states, USGL represents a golden opportunity to meet our clean energy goals.

Goal

The GLOW-Connect workshop is being organized to identify specific and critical research gaps for academic researchers for placing Great Lakes Offshore Wind development on a fast-track and draw a clear roadmap for the academic community and various stakeholders, including governmental agencies, utilities, and industries. The focus on the USGL provides a coherent and regional focus to researchers with specific expertise and knowledge that are relevant to the topic. The goal of this workshop is to identify key research questions that need to be addressed to understand and overcome barriers to large-scale deployment of offshore wind in the USGL. While these barriers and the underlying research themes partially overlap with research on offshore wind at the east coast, west coast, and Gulf of Mexico, this workshop will emphasize research questions and deployment barriers that are specific to the USG.