Data for: Lessons learned from the design and operation of a small-scale cross-flow tidal turbine

The Turbine Lander, a small-scale (1.19 m x 0.85 m) veritical-axis, cross-flow turbine was developed at the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington to generate modest amounts of power (e.g., 100 W average) from tidal currents. Following design and fabrication, the Turbine Lander was characterized in laboratory and controlled field testing before being deployed for 141 days in Sequim Bay, Washington. Cabled operations during the deployment enabled real-time data aquisition of variables related to system performance. In addition, environmental observations were sampled using an Adaptable Monitoring Package (Polagye at el., 2020).  "Lessons learned from the design and operation of a small-scale cross-flow tidal turbine" by Bassett et al. (2025) summarizes the efforts to characterize the system, assess its performance in situ, and offers lessons learned from the laboratory-to-field effort. 

The data included here, which is summarized in detail below, are the outputs of key labratory and vessel-based characterization efforts, inflow conditions during the deployment, power generation by the Turbine Lander, and images of biofouling and optical conditions observed during the deployment. Detailed descriptions of the variables and example plotting scripts for working with the .mat files are provided.