The US Department of Energy (DOE) selected $25 million in research projects for next-generation marine energy devices. These 12 projects will reduce capital costs and promote the innovation cycle by testing new concepts. Marine energy includes ocean wave power, tidal, and river/ocean current devices that convert movement of water into electricity.
Selections were made across three topic areas. The first two address scientific and engineering challenges of generating power from dynamic, low-velocity and high-density waves and currents. The third area provides better information to limit the costs and time to permit projects.
Early stage device design research
- Oscilla Power, Inc of Seattle, Washington will showcase the effectiveness its wave energy converter through open-ocean scaled testing in partnership with the University of Maine.
- Atargis Energy Corporation of Pueblo, Colorado will advance its wave energy converter through numerical simulations at the model scale.
- Columbia Power Technologies, Inc of Charlottesville, Virginia will design and test a prototype low-power wave energy converter that reduces costs and provides a quickly deployable mobile power system for maritime sensors, monitoring, and communications equipment.
- Littoral Power Systems, Inc of Fall River, Massachusetts will improve on its turbine design to increase power, reduce costs, and test a fully integrated sub-scale prototype that is ready for pilot site installation.
- University of Hawaii at Manoa, of Honolulu, Hawaii will advance its wave energy converter concept and conduct testing in the open ocean.
- North Carolina State University of Raleigh, North Carolina will develop integrated numerical models and open water experimental prototypes for an energy-harvesting ocean kite system.
- Texas A&M University of College Station, Texas will develop and test a prototype of its surface-riding wave energy converter which will be ready for open-sea testing at the end of the project.
- Florida Atlantic University of Boca Raton, Florida will develop and prototype a low-flow marine current turbine to provide partial power to recharge battery banks onboard an unmanned mobile at-sea recharge station for aerial drones and potentially other unmanned marine vehicles.
Controls and power take off design integration and testing
- Portland State University of Portland, Oregon will present a newly-invented adjustable magnetic spring that allows for greater power adjustability and controllability.
- CalWave Power Technologies, Inc of Berkeley, California will improve on its sub-scale prototype by incorporating a new control architecture to improve costs and efficiency.
- AWS Ocean Energy Inc of Wilmington, Delaware will improve a prototype hydraulic/electrical system and demonstrate performance in a laboratory environment.
Dissemination of environmental data and analyses to facilitate the marine energy regulatory process
Kearns and West of San Francisco, California will build a marine and hydrokinetic energy environmental permitting toolkit that includes a spatial, regulatory, and document database of information. The project will address the complexities of permitting processes via a consolidation and dissemination of information needed for efficient permitting.
