Water Power Technologies Office Releases Its Largest Funding Opportunity and Funds Projects to Accelerate Development of Marine Energy Technologies

Selectees and Locations: 

• Marine Energy Laboratory Call and Sapling Projects: Various DOE national laboratories.
• U.S. Tidal Energy Advancement Funding Opportunity: Orcas Power & Light Cooperative (Eastsound, Washington, with project in the San Juan Islands, Washington); ORPC (Portland, Maine, with project at Cook Inlet in Alaska); and University of Alaska Fairbanks (Fairbanks, Alaska, with project on the Yukon River at Galena, Alaska) (Project selections announced in 2024).
• Marine Energy Systems Innovation at Sea Funding Opportunity: Binghamton University (Binghamton, New York); Florida Atlantic University (Boca Raton, Florida); North Carolina State University (Raleigh, North Carolina); Oneka Technologies USA, Inc. (Fort Pierce, Florida); Sea Potential, LLC (New Canaan, Connecticut); and Water Bros Desalination, LLC (Charlotte, North Carolina).

In Fiscal Year 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) released its largest funding opportunity to date—$45 million for tidal and current energy technologies—and made investments through another funding opportunity and a series of projects at DOE national laboratories to advance marine energy technologies. 

In December 2022, WPTO announced $10.5 million for marine energy research projects at five DOE national laboratories. Eleven projects focus on work related to power at sea; the Pioneer Array test article design and development; resilient coastal communities and the development of microgrid tools, planning, and integration with marine energy applications; and environmental monitoring. (The last two topics were funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.) 

Another nine projects were selected as "Saplings" through WPTO's Seedling and Sapling program, which funds promising new and innovative research ideas at the national laboratories. These projects focus on materials and instrumentation, data access and analytics, environmental monitoring, commercialization, and marine energy device controls and components.

In May 2023, WPTO released the $45 million funding opportunity, which will make the first large-scale investment in a tidal and/or current energy research, development, and demonstration site in the United States. It will also support a community-led tidal and/or current energy planning and development project. This investment will encourage U.S. leadership in tidal and current energy development, while also meeting community energy priorities and developing the sector's supply chain and workforce. Applications for the two topic areas in this funding opportunity were due in July and October, and DOE announced selections in February 2024.

In July 2023, WPTO announced nearly $10 million for seven innovative projects that will accelerate the development and testing of marine energy technologies. These investments advance research on wave-powered technology for use in seawater desalination and support a feasibility study for a potential ocean current test facility. The selected projects focus on proving robust and reliable designs of wave-powered desalination systems, developing and validating novel components in wave-powered desalination systems, supporting advancements in marine energy desalination more broadly, and evaluating the feasibility of establishing an ocean current testing facility to share testing costs across many developers and reduce barriers to testing.