Courses / Farm Design

Course Content

Guiding Principles of Farm Design
Build a Farm to Suit Your Site Considerations for Year One
Single-Line Array
Single-Line Array
5-Line Array
5-Line Array
Advanced Design
Catenary Array
Using the Farm Design Tool
Introducing the Farm Design Tool Design a Farm to Suit Your Site Consider Site Area Startup Costs
Finalize Your Design
You Made a Farm Design! What’s Next?
Resources & Tools
The Ocean Farm Design Tool
Farm Design Forum
Lesson 5 Using the Farm Design Tool

Back to: Farm Design

Introducing the Farm Design Tool

Farming the ocean means navigating hundreds of unseen factors to support a floating system of lines and buoys. Every farm is different, because all designs must ultimately be site-specific. Localized forces such as the current speed and direction, the exposure of your site, even the nutrient availability in the water, which influences the ultimate biomass of your kelp—all of these factors will impact the drag on your system. The drag, in turn, dictates the size of your anchor, which impacts your lease area and your eventual startup costs. 

A skiff on the farm

When you’re just starting out, it can be overwhelming to try and keep all of these different factors and impacts straight.

For years, GreenWave has watched farmers struggle with these complicated calculations, wishing there was an easier way. That’s why we built the Farm Design Tool: to do the math for you, so you can make the big-picture choices of how to ultimately construct and operate your farm. 

We recommend you use the Farm Design Tool early and often throughout your farm startup journey. First, use the Tool to learn. Get to know how site depth impacts lease size, how current changes anchor size, and how all these factors ultimately impact cost. Manipulate these variables to inform your thinking as you’re deciding what type of farm system to pursue. Then, use the Tool again as a planning resource when you’ve chosen a site and want to narrow in on the details.

Use the Farm Design Tool to determine:

  • How many arrays will you need to meet your production goals?

  • How large a site do you need to lease to support your farm?

  • What anchor type should you use?

Video Tutorial
Watch this guided tutorial on how to navigate the Farm Design Tool.

Know the Limitations

The Farm Design Tool is a modeling tool built on a series of assumptions that inform the calculations behind the scenes. It isn’t perfect; there are some limitations. You should be aware of these assumptions and know that you’ll likely need to make some modifications to your design to suit the particulars of your site. Before you finalize your farm plans or make any major financial investment in your farm gear, you might want to verify your designs with a marine engineer. 

The Tool assumes that your farm has:

  • Sugar kelp only

  • Flat bathymetry and a constant depth across the whole site

  • A consistent bottom type

  • One anchor type per site

  • One array type per site (either the single- or the 5-line)

You should also know:

  1. That there is a built-in safety factor when calculating the holding power of your arrays. This means that the recommended anchor size the tool suggests could be larger than what you actually require. In some cases, it’s possible you could get away with using smaller anchors. However, our calculations don’t account for a difference in holding power due to bottom type. This means, for certain bottom type/anchor combinations, you might need to add more holding power. When in doubt, verify your anchor choices with a marine engineer.

  2. The growline length is a maximum of 600 ft. for a single-line array and 400 ft. for a 5-line array. It is possible to build arrays with longer growlines, but you might need to add mid-line anchors, which the Tool won’t model.

  3. The farm diagram images are not to scale.