The areas include accelerating research and development of floating offshore wind platforms; exploring innovations for fixed-bottom foundations; improving offshore wildlife protection through new monitoring technologies; expanding the reach of the domestic supply chain; advancing the US academic leadership in floating offshore wind; and investigating solutions to protect future infrastructure from lightning.
The deadline for filing concept papers is 3 September, and the deadline for full applications is 7 November 2024.
The expected timeframe for award negotiations is August 2025.
According to the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), this funding opportunity represents one of DOE’s single largest investments in offshore wind, comprising USD 48 million in funding from WETO with USD 600,000 in funding support from the US Department of the Interior’s (DOI) Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).
The funding includes six topic areas. The first is related to the floating offshore wind platform research and development, with designated USD 20 million in funds.
The subtopics for this topic are Refinement and Innovation in Floating Platform Design, Manufacturing, and Deployment, and Next-Generation Integrated Turbine/Platform Research.
The second topic area covers innovation for fixed-bottom offshore wind foundation types and supporting infrastructure, with up to USD 7.5 million in funds.
The third topic area is technology advancement to inform risk to birds and bats from offshore wind energy. Here, up to USD 8 million of designated funding will be available, which aims to advance technologies to monitor bird and bat presence and behavior better to understand the risk to species from offshore wind deployment.
