DOE’s WPTO Launches InDEEP Prize to Foster Renewable Energy Research

By Mr. Bill McShane, Marine and Hydrokinetic Technology, Water Power Technologies Office
Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) (water.energy.gov) enables research, development, and testing of emerging technologies to advance marine energy as well as next-generation hydropower and pumped storage systems for a flexible, reliable grid. To reduce marine energy costs and fully leverage hydropower’s contribution to the grid, WPTO invests in research and technology design; validates performance and reliability for new technologies; develops and enables access to necessary testing infrastructure; and disseminates objective information and data for technology developers and decision makers.

To help build energy resilience in coastal cities and support President Biden’s goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, the WPTO is launching the Innovating Distributed Embedded Energy Prize (InDEEP) which seeks innovations that blend materials and renewable energy research to help convert wave energy to usable electricity. This prize is the first step in exploring the potential for distributed embedded energy converter technology (DEEC-Tec) for ocean wave energy conversion.

DEEC-Tec combines many small energy converters, often less than a few centimeters in size, into a single, larger ocean wave energy converter. This larger system could convert energy from a wide range of ocean locations and wave types. Successful DEEC-Tec concepts developed through this prize are those that show the greatest techno-economic potential to contribute to grid-scale power systems.
InDEEP will challenge innovators from within and beyond wave energy to design and develop novel materials for marine energy applications that will lay the foundation for generating electricity at the grid scale.

InDEEP is a three-phase, two-year competition that offers a combined cash prize pool up to $2.3M. Teams will also receive technical support, teaming support, and other forms of mentorship throughout the prize to enable their success. Mentorship support includes that provided by the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) and Sandia National Lab (SNL).

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For more information about this research and InDEEP, visit the prize page at https://www.herox.com/indeep/ or contact Mr. Bill McShane at william.mcshane@ee.doe.gov.