The Powering the Blue Economy™: Ocean Observing Prize challenged 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 included a series of competitions, with millions of dollars in awards, to encourage rapid innovation in the fields of marine energy and ocean observations.
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 COMPETITIONS
The Ocean Observing Prize consisted 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, focused exclusively on the theme of hurricane monitoring. The challenge theme may vary in future iterations of the prize.
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 diverse 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.
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.
Thank you all for your hard work in preparing your submissions for the DEVELOP Competition: DESIGN Contest.
We have, however, received a few messages from some teams experiencing power outages and challenges accessing the internet in Texas. If your team is experiencing technical or access difficulties due to extreme weather in your area that inhibited your prize submission, please reach out to us at oceanobserving@nrel.gov.
As you prepare your final submissions today, we wanted to pass on an opportunity to share your testing needs.
The development of the PacWave open ocean wave energy test facility is proceeding rapidly and the South test site is scheduled to be operational in the Spring of 2023.
To help prepare for the first round of testing and demonstration projects, the PacWave and PMEC teams have released an RFI to solicit information from the wave energy converter R&D community, the developers of related blue economy technologies, and other stakeholders. The information received will help the PacWave team understand how the facility can most effectively be used to meet the testing needs of the WEC community and to ensure testing opportunities are aligned with industry and stakeholder needs. We strongly encourage all wave energy converter technology stakeholders to respond to the RFI.
Please be advised that the DEVELOP Competition: Official Rules Document has been formally modified to include a new delay assessment submission. We ask that all potential contestants provide feedback on current and anticipated delays from COVID-19 in the DESIGN Contest Delay Assessment template, available under the Ocean Observing Prize HeroX Resources tab. Competition organizers will use your responses to guide the development of the prize schedule. Your answers will not be scored or considered in the review of your submission, but do note; this is a required element of your full submission package.
If there are still any outstanding questions on the DEVELOP Competition rules, please reach out to us on the forum.
We have exciting news! The Water Power Technologies Office and NOAA announced the location for the Ocean Observing Prize BUILD Contest: Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division in West Bethesda, Maryland. Winning teams from the DESIGN Contest will have the opportunity to build their prototype designs and test them in a wave basin before moving onto sea trials in the SPLASH Contest.
We also want to thank those of you who joined us for the Marine Technology Society, Powering the Blue Economy: Ocean Observing Prize Q&A session earlier this month. The broad spectrum of questions from the community made the webinar a huge success! In case you missed it, we encourage you to check out the webinar recording here: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/recording/4130690774581135368
Please reach out to us on the HeroX Forum with any additional questions.
As you are preparing your submissions, we wanted to share an open opportunity to help you test your wave energy powered AUVs. The Testing Expertise and Access for Marine Energy Research (TEAMER™) program, sponsored by WPTO and directed by the Pacific Ocean Energy Trust, supports developers seeking access to the nation’s best wave energy facilities and expertise. The second application window is now open through December 18, 2020.
If selected, you can get facility access between April and November of 2021, getting you and your device ready for the BUILD Contest. You can apply for TEAMER here: https://teamer-us.org/application/
And in case you missed the recent applicant webinar, check out the recordings for background on opportunities in the blue economy, and an introduction to the available modeling resources:
