The Powering the Blue Economy™: Ocean Observing Prize challenges innovators to integrate marine renewable energy with ocean observation platforms, ultimately revolutionizing our ability to collect the data needed to understand, map, and monitor the ocean.
A joint endeavor of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) and the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS®) program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Ocean Observing Prize includes a series of competitions, with millions of dollars in awards, to encourage rapid innovation in the fields of marine energy and ocean observations.
The prize began in 2019 with the DISCOVER Competition and is followed by the DEVELOP Competition.
Team Maiden Wave Energy LLC’s Rover tests their early-stage prototype at the Naval Surface Warfare Center’s facility in Carderock, Maryland. Credit:NREL
Prize Goals
The purpose of this prize is to:
Enable collection of valuable new data. Proposed innovations should increase the coverage, resolution, and/or types of ocean and atmospheric variables that can be observed, collected, processed, and transmitted, leading to improved understanding, monitoring, and management of the ocean.
Generate sufficient power from co-located marine resources. Submissions must be able to generate enough power to meet the energy needs of the ocean observing community and prove the viability of marine energy to power ocean observing activities.
Accelerate commercialization of marine energy systems. Traditionally, marine energy devices developed for the electrical grid can take many years to design, build, and test. The prize aims to accelerate marine energy commercialization by working at smaller scales and zeroing in on the specific energy needs of ocean observing systems.
Forge a robust community of innovators. This prize will welcome new innovators into the marine energy and ocean observing space. It will also help form new partnerships and collaborations among industry, academia, and government to create innovative ocean observing technologies powered by marine energy.
The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory are supporting DOE and NOAA on the development and administration of the prize.
Prize Structure
The Ocean Observing Prize consists of two competitions designed to accelerate innovation in integrating marine energy with ocean observation. The first competition, the DISCOVER Competition, which is now closed, solicited novel concepts that integrated ocean observing technologies with marine energy systems. The second competition, the DEVELOP Competition, is focused exclusively on the theme of hurricane monitoring.
DISCOVER Competition: Propose a Marine Energy Powered System
Competitors submitted novel concepts and ideas to integrate ocean observing sensors and platforms with marine energy systems. This ideation crowdsourced promising ideas that address pressing energy challenges in ocean observing as demonstrated by initial customer outreach and discovery. All concepts submitted into the prize proposed a marine energy system addressing power limitations to collecting oceanographic data and which could enable more pervasive ocean observing and encourage new growth in multiple blue economy sectors.
Competitors were evaluated on the impact of their innovation, end-user market potential, and technical feasibility. In April 2020 DOE announced 11 winners that received funding.
DEVELOP Competition: Develop a Marine Energy Powered System
The theme of the DEVELOP Competition is “Buoys and Autonomous Systems” and was informed by the DISCOVER Competition. This theme includes, but is not limited to, ideas that could use marine energy to increase platform longevity, energy availability, or other similar performance characteristics.
This competition challenges competitors to design, build, and test their experimental wave-powered ocean observing prototypes at the Naval Surface Warfare Center’s facility in Carderock, Maryland. These early-stage devices were not meant to be mature systems but demonstrate basic functionality and potential for refinement.
While this technology is still in the early stages of development, the prototypes developed during this competition could help identify future research opportunities for marine energy-powered ocean observing platforms.
Past engagement in the DISCOVER competition was not required for participation in the DEVELOP Competition.
DESIGNa Marine Energy Powered System
During the DESIGN Contest, participating teams submitted their designs of prototype systems that could be used for hurricane monitoring. Competitors were encouraged to submit more than one design concept, so long as it was materially different from the other submissions. DOE selected seven winners of the DESIGN Contest in April 2021.
BUILD a Marine Energy Powered System
Following the DESIGN Contest, the BUILD Contest provided participating teams with the opportunity to build their early-stage experimental prototypes and test them in the Maneuvering and Seakeeping Basin—also known as the U.S. Navy’s indoor ocean—located at the Naval Surface Warfare Center’s facility in Carderock, Maryland.
During the testing portion of the BUILD Contest, teams assembled and prepared their experimental ocean observing devices, completing a dry and wet check to ensure the devices were safe and ready to go in the water. After each device cleared the checks, the crew placed each prototype one at a time in the test tank. Each prototype weathered a variety of wave conditions and had the opportunity to demonstrate its capabilities through a data-collecting maneuvering mission and a wave-powered recharging session.
Experts evaluated each wave-powered prototype in four categories, including data, maneuverability, power, and mission compliance (like operations, safety, size, and weight). In August 2022, DOE announced the three teams that won cash prizes for their prototypes' potential to power ocean observing technologies.
SPLASH Contest
During the SPLASH Contest, BUILD Contest winners have the opportunity to continue developing their wave-powered ocean observing prototypes. The final contest aims to provide a pathway for continued technology development and focuses on direct laboratory mentorship for competitors, a testing campaign customized to competitor needs, and a final cash prize for competitors that successfully leverage that mentorship and complete their testing.
To ensure testing is aligned with competitor needs, teams will have access to a network of testing facilities through the Testing Expertise and Access for Marine Energy Research (TEAMER) program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office. Experts will evaluate selected teams that successfully complete their TEAMER testing campaign to receive a cash prize. Up to three winning teams can share a prize pool of $150,000.
Guidelines
Who can participate?
Please review the official rules document for the application process and instructions for competing.
If you want to subscribe to updates on the prize or have any questions, you may use the contact feature on the HeroX platform, or message us directly.
If you’re not interested in competing but want to help with the prize in other ways, please feel free to contact us.
Disclaimer
Note the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is evaluating all funding opportunities, including prize challenges, to ensure appropriate resources are allocated efficiently, and that the Department's initiatives are in line with the statutory mission of DOE and the policies and priorities of the Administration and DOE. DOE is undertaking this evaluation in accordance with all laws, regulations, and fiscal responsibility, as efficiently as possible.
Please be advised that the Ocean Observing Prize Official BUILD Rules Document has been updated to provide more clarity around the DPPMs, extend the deadline to request a second DPPM, and remove the field-of-view constraints for the DPPM. Additionally, we've updated the DPPM Consultations resource to also reflect these slight modifications to the rules and include questions from the second round of DPPM Consultations.
Please be advised that the official Ocean Observing Prize Official BUILD Rules Document has been updated to remove the downward-facing constraint of the DPPM in Appendix E and provide more clarity. The CAD drawings have been slightly modified to account for these revisions.
We've uploaded a new version of the Q&A Responses from the May 10, 2021 webinar. This document now holds all questions asked live during the webinar as well as a few submitted by email afterwards.
Additionally, we've added a resource which answers questions that arose from the DPPM Consultations.
Lastly, please remember to check the FAQ for responses to commonly asked questions.
Please be advised that the official Ocean Observing Prize Rules Document has been modified to update the DPPM mounting points and measurements so that they now match the CAD file. Please review these changes, now available in the updated BUILD rules document.
The Ocean Observing Prize team is hard at work reviewing your applications for the DESIGN Contest, and we are looking forward to announcing the winners in mid-April. Until then, stay up-to-date with our major announcements on the Water Power Technologies Office's Water Wire newsletter and the American-Made Challenges Twitter.
As always reach out with any questions, and we can’t wait to celebrate your accomplishments as we move into the BUILD Contest. Stay tuned!
Join the Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office on March 1, from 3:30–5:00 p.m. ET, for the semiannual stakeholder webinar, where staff will discuss some of the most pressing changes affecting water power R&D in 2021. Led by Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Renewable Power and WPTO Director Alejandro Moreno, the webinar will feature program managers and technical leads from across WPTO. Program representatives will provide an update on the administration transition and FY21 budget, highlight recent announcements and publications, share project updates including prize milestones and awards, and discuss upcoming priorities. The presentation will close with Q&A.
This webinar is one of WPTO’s many efforts to improve transparency and engagement with stakeholders in the hydropower and marine energy industries. Register for the webinar and email questions ahead of time .
Our oceans are a crucial asset: a precious habitat to millions of species, an essential source of food, a vital carbon sink, an enabler of trade, and a key determinant of environmental and human health. However, from tropical storms to hurricanes and tsunamis, our oceans also present a substantial threat to coastal communities.
Protecting our oceans, as well as the human lives onshore, will require innovation. It is for this reason that the U.S. Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office launched the Powering the Blue Economy™ initiative.
This body of work seeks to understand the power requirements of emerging coastal and maritime markets and advance technologies that could integrate marine renewable energy to relieve power constraints and enable growth of the blue economy. The Ocean Observing Prize is just one of many programs supported by this initiative.
Tools of the Trade
Ocean observation is aided by a variety of instruments, platforms, tools, and technologies, such as:
Autonomous underwater vehicles
Buoyancy gliders
Profiling floats
Weather and drifter buoys
Electronic tags on marine animals.
Two of the most-used ocean observation devices are maritime sensors and navigation aids. Maritime sensors monitor the ocean in near real time, improving our ability to understand and predict events, such as hurricanes, waves, sea level changes, and tsunamis. Navigation aids assist commercial and recreational ship traffic by marking areas of danger and zones for safe passage, which improves maritime safety by reducing the risk of collisions or groundings.
Though they vary significantly in terms of function, size, cost, and power consumption, these devices are alike in one regard: Nearly all of them rely on batteries for power—and batteries must be periodically recharged or replaced. For systems that operate far offshore or deep underwater for sustained periods, recharging a battery becomes a challenging and costly endeavor.
Such energy limitations force ocean scientists to make tough choices regarding what sensors they can host on a platform, how much data they can collect, how often they can communicate with the system or relay the data back to shore, and how often they must visit the device once deployed.
The ability to capture locally sourced ocean energy could be a game changer for the operation of ocean observing devices as well as for the field of ocean observation, expanding the length of time the instruments could stay at sea and the frequency with which they collect and transmit data back to shore.
Importance of Ocean Observation
The impact of ocean observation extends far beyond the coastlines: Life on this planet is inextricably intertwined with the health of our oceans.
Rising ocean temperatures carry major implications for food security and increase both the likelihood and intensity of hurricanes and dangerous tropical storms. Extreme weather events snarl international shipping logistics, further straining supply chains and inflating prices of necessary goods. And expanding atmospheric carbon dioxide is driving ocean acidification, threatening the viability of coral reefs and other life-sustaining organisms.
Ocean observation is crucial because it allows scientists to take the vital signs of our oceans. And a more thorough understanding of the oceans can allow us to safeguard both communities and ecosystems as well as meet expanding demands for ocean-derived food, materials, and energy.
Some of the benefits of ocean observation include advancements in the areas of:
Safety: improve reliability in predicting the next Category 5 hurricane; augment accuracy of maritime navigation.
Environment: enhance ecosystem management practices; support the harvest of fish and algae; protect coral reefs and endangered species; discover new species.
Economy: identify future aquaculture sites; improve at-sea navigation, support the resiliency of coastal communities; and encourage the development of marine energy as a reliable power source.
Human health: discover new medical treatments; maintain the safety and reliability of food sources.
About the Ocean Observing Prize
Ocean Observing Prize competitors were tasked with developing concepts that integrated marine renewable energy with ocean observing systems, such as weather buoys, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), meteorological-oceanographic (metoc) buoys, ocean observing cabled arrays, and more. These marine-energy-powered devices will effectively cut the charging cord, enabling longer deployments at sea, resulting in better data capture and a better understanding of our oceans.
The Ocean Observing Prize consists of two competitions: DISCOVER and DEVELOP. The first competition, the DISCOVER Competition, which began in 2019, solicited novel concepts that integrated ocean observing technologies with marine energy systems.
The second competition, the DEVELOP Competition, which launched in 2021, focused exclusively on the theme of hurricane monitoring.
Why Focus on Hurricane Monitoring?
While scientists and researchers have become adept at modeling and forecasting storm tracks, crucial improvements to storm intensity forecasting depend on the collection of better in situ, or in-ocean, measurements than what are currently available.
Collecting data on tropical cyclones and hurricanes is challenging for several reasons:
The nature of these types of weather events makes it difficult to anticipate when and where they will occur.
Storm environments are extremely energetic and create difficult operating conditions for people and robots.
Even with power management measures in place, existing observation systems struggle to operate in one location for the full length of a hurricane season.
The development of effective evacuation plans and coastal protection efforts are hindered by the inability to provide communities with accurate intensity forecasting. And the stakes could not be higher; for example, the difference between a Category 3 and Category 4 hurricane can be nine feet of additional storm surge.
Riders on the Storm
Predicting storm intensity is challenging, largely due to a lack of data, which could be addressed by collecting in situ data before, during, and after a hurricane develops and strengthens at sea. Amassing this type of data, however, requires an ocean observing platform that can be deployed at sea for long periods of time to wait for approaching storms.
While some systems have the ability to stay out at sea for an extended duration, they are often restricted to surface operations or are limited in speed, maneuverability, or in the number of data collecting instruments that they can host.
More frequent sampling, propulsion, or communications increases power consumption, which rapidly drains batteries and reduces the length of time the system can be deployed. Power management is crucial to the system design to maximize data collection and deployment time.
A wave-powered, self-charging ocean observing platform could address those limitations — which is where the Ocean Observing Prize comes into play. The prize challenges participants to leverage their cutting-edge creativity to meet this real-world need.
