The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $25 million in funding to support increased research, development, and demonstration of technologies that harness wave power to create electricity.
The funding supports eight projects that will make up the first round of open-water testing at the PacWave South test site off the Oregon coast.
These awards will strengthen wave energy technologies to accelerate their commercial viability and deploy them at scale to help decarbonize the grid and reach President Biden’s goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Harnessing the unrelenting power of the ocean is a clean, innovative, and sustainable way to curtail carbon pollution
said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm.
Wave energy converters, which capture and convert waves into carbon-free electricity, require testing in realistic conditions to be deployed at scale. Obstacles to testing in the open ocean include permitting challenges and a scarcity of available test sites.
The selected projects are part of DOE’s Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) “Advancing Wave Energy Technologies through Open Water Testing at PacWave” funding opportunity to support wave energy technologies through research, development, and eventual deployment.
The eight projects focus on:
#1 Testing wave energy converter designs for use in geographically remote areas or on small, local energy grids:
- CalWave Power Technologies Inc. (Oakland, CA) (Award amount: $7,500,000)
- Columbia Power Technologies Inc. (Charlottesville, VA) (Award amount: $4,182,275)
#2 Developing wave energy converter designs that can be either connected to or disconnected from the electricity grid:
- Dehlsen Associates, LLC (Santa Barbara, CA) (Award amount: $1,800,000)
- Oscilla Power Inc. (Seattle, WA) (Award amount: $1,800,000)
#3 Performing research and development at PacWave related to environmental monitoring technologies, instrumentation systems that operators use to control wave energy converters, and other technologies:
- Integral Consulting (Seattle, WA) (Award amount: $379,329)
- Littoral Power Systems, Inc. (New Bedford, MA) (Award amount: $3,976,401)
- Portland State University (Portland, OR) (Award amount: $4,507,330)
- University of Washington (Seattle, WA) (Award amount: $1,299,689)
