DOE announces $22 million in R&D for hydrokinetic energy and power-storage systems

Jocelyn Brown-Saracino / Environmental Research Manager / Wind and Water Power Technologies Office

The Energy Department recently announced a $22 million funding opportunity for new research, development, and demonstration projects to advance marine and hydrokinetic (MHK) energy systems that generate electricity from waves, tides, and currents and to improve environmental monitoring technologies that will help minimize environmental impacts. The funding will support projects that reduce the cost of electricity from MHK systems and help protect the marine environment, thus increasing sustainable electricity generation from ocean and river energy resources.

The StingRAY is a utility-scale wave power system.

The StingRAY is one such device that might be used in a utility-scale wave power system.

The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy expects to fund up to 10 projects that address technology development and market acceleration and deployment. Specifically, the funding opportunity will support projects that:

Integrate next-generation MHK hardware and software technologies into existing wave and current energy conversion
systems and demonstrate improved systems in full-scale, open-water tests for a one-year period; and
Design, test, and validate environmental monitoring technologies that quantify the impacts of MHK systems in marine
settings, such as acoustics, electromagnetic fields created by MHK devices and subsea cables, and interactions
between these devices and marine animals.

For more information, read the full opportunity at the Energy Department’s Funding Opportunity Exchange website .

The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy accelerates development and deployment of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies and market-based solutions that strengthen U.S. energy security, environmental quality, and economic vitality. Go to water.energy.gov for information on our Water Power Program’s funding opportunities, sponsoring the development of innovative technologies that generate renewable, environmentally friendly, and cost-competitive electricity from water resources. To learn more about how MHK devices capture energy from waves, tides and currents, view this Energy 101 video.

US Energy Storage Projects and Prospects Guide 2016

The guide focuses on the Borrego Springs, Tehachapiand, and Notrees energy storage projects and examines the long-term impact that they will have on the future project pipeline in the United States

The whitepaper covers:
• Storage applications that made sense for some of the major utilities and why they have deployed certain technologies over others
• How to mitigate risks during your development cycle to avoid significant losses
• Business strategies used by Southern California Edison, SDG&E and Duke Energy to lower upfront capital costs

Introduction
Energy storage enjoys a privileged position in the US. According to the Energy Storage Association’s US Energy Storage Monitor, 60.3 MW of storage was deployed in the third quarter of 2015, a twofold year-on-year increase. Much of this tremendous impetus comes from the early adoption of electrical energy storage. The US has pioneered the use of batteries for grid-scale storage applications, for example.

Responding to regulation in what is arguably the world’s foremost market for energy storage, California, utilities started commissioning significant projects as far back as 2012. And increasingly other states, from Hawaii to New York, are emerging as key markets for grid-scale energy storage, with utilities there initiating projects, too. In fact, it is probably fair to say that the US now has more and longer experience of grid-scale electrical energy storage than any other country in the world. This experience is critical going forward because one of the big challenges facing electrical storage deployment is not just how to follow best practice now, but also what to expect in future. Few grid-scale projects have the operating history to oer insights into this complex topic. Of those that do exist, some of the most significant are in the US. Thus, in the run up to Energy Storage Update’s forthcoming conference in the US, we felt it would be important to review a number of pioneering US projects and assess how their performance has lived up to expectations. The three projects chosen for analysis in this report all belong to investor-owned US utilities and have significant operational experience. They are:

• The Borrego Springs microgrid project owned by San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) in California.
• The Notrees wind storage demonstration project owned by Duke Energy in Texas.
• The Tehachapi wind energy storage project owned by Southern California Energy (SCE) in California.

For the rest, register at: http://www.energystorageupdate.com/usa/

Or http://1.energystorageupdate.com/LP=9221