Page 36: of Marine Technology Magazine (April 2016)

Offshore: Wave Energy Prize

The Chase for $2m Prize (& much, much more!)

Nine teams (plus two alternates) are the ? nalists vying for the $2 million purse in the U.S.

Department of Energy (DOE) Wave Energy Prize. Last month MTR spoke with Alison La-

Bonte, Marine and Hydrokinetic Technology Program Manager in the U.S. Department of

Energy’s (DOE) Wind and Water Power Technologies, for her take on the program and the technological development it engenders.

By Greg Trauthwein

In a contest designed to fast-track development of Wave ed their technical submissions, which allowed us a great pool

Energy technology, the least mature of all renewable energy to down select to the 20 quali? ed teams to move forward to technologies, the U.S. Department of Energy put its money the small scale tank testing. From those 20 teams, 17 teams where its mouth was, conducting a 20-month contest dangling completed through all of the steps (numerical modeling, a $2 million prize for the innovator who could best devise a 1/50th size prototype, running in a test tank, etc.). “Then we technology to maximize energy capture from waves selected from there the nine ? nalist teams and two alternates, “When I came onboard with the Department of Energy four each which has shown that they have the potential to exceed years ago, I saw that (wave power) was a technology that was our minimum bar of doubling energy capture,” said LaBonte.

the youngest (of the renewable energy types),” said LaBonte, Registration started in April 2015, and the winner will be who said that today wave energy is where wind energy was crowned November 16, 2016. “This is an enormous amount 20 years ago. of effort in a short time,” LaBonte summarized.

The purpose of the Wave Energy Prize is to provide an “Apples to Apples” competition, working to identify the most Open Source Information promising technologies and con? gurations to maximize wave While the $2 million in prize money is the tangible driver energy capture cost-effectively. for the teams, the U.S. Department of Energy – and in fact the

Teams must meet or beat the ACE threshold, (ACE being world of renewable energy stakeholders – are set to bene? t a bene? t-to-cost ratio), which was selected by the Wave En- handsomely from the contest.

ergy Prize as a metric appropriate for comparing low Technol- “Most notably (the competition was critical in) attracting the ogy Readiness Level Wave Energy Capture (WEC) concepts new expertise from a diverse set of industries that can be lev- when there is not enough data to calculate the levelized cost eraged toward wave energy,” said LaBonte. “We’re also draw- of energy—itself a cost-to-bene? t ratio—from a device. ACE ing an audience from investors, and from the public. Finally, is determined by dividing, in essence, the wave energy extrac- we’re driving the entire sectors understanding of the key attri- tion ef? ciency of a WEC by its structural cost. Finalists were butes and metric by which to measure these devices, so when determined based on their potential to achieve the doubling any agency, any investor, any country is looking to quickly of the current state-of-the-art ACE value of 1.5 meters per accelerate wave energy projects in their domain they are able million dollars (m/$M) to 3 m/$M during 1/20th scale tank to leverage this open source of the data and metrics. ” testing at the MASK Basin, making them eligible to win the These are interesting times for renewable energy, as even grand prize. with oil and gas prices in the doldrums for nearly two years, “the technology that came online with the most new genera-

From the Beginning tion capacity was wind energy technology, so we’re still seeing

Early on the contest was simply a test to see if it could draw steady growth in the renewable energy sector,” said LaBonte.

a large enough number of quality contestants from diverse While the development of technology is one link, the in- technological backgrounds to make the competition compel- corporation of the tech into real-world use is another. “We ling, said LaBonte. “We drew 92 registrants, and 66 complet- are investing to meet near term goals of deployment in early

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MTR

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