Q&A: Ocean Energy and Monitoring Innovation with DOE’s Water Power Technologies Office

The Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) was formed in 2008 to support early-stage research into marine energy generation technologies. For nine years the office primarily focused on advancing grid-scale water-based power, but in 2017 WPTO began exploring options to support renewable energy technologies that do not connect to the grid. The resulting report, Powering the Blue Economy: Exploring Opportunities for Marine Renewable Energy in Maritime Markets, formed part of the foundation for a new prize-based competition in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Integrated Ocean Observing System program aimed at driving innovation in both renewable power and energy-intensive ocean data collection: the Ocean Observing Prize.

Winners of the first phase of the Ocean Observing Prize, DISCOVERY were announced in April. The next phase, DEVELOP, was announced on June 3 and will be open for submissions August 24.

EESI policy associate Amber Todoroff spoke with Alejandro Moreno, director of WPTO at DOE, to discuss the potential for advancing ocean-monitoring and renewable energy technologies for marine science and the American economy.

Q: What’s the connection between marine renewable energy and ocean observing systems?

Moreno: Traditionally ocean observing data was limited to physical data--temperature, salinity--things which are easy to monitor and energy-cheap. But now geochemical and biological data at sea is becoming more and more sought after.

For example, eDNA is a new technique for monitoring species. It's basically harvesting the remnants of DNA in the water column to tell you what species have recently been there. This is a much more comprehensive picture of what the biosphere looks like in a particular area.

But collecting that data actually takes orders of magnitude more energy than just recording temperature and salinity. To be able to do that accurately, effectively, and at scale you need ocean observing systems that can actually generate energy at sea, so you’re not constantly going back for more energy.

Q:  Why did NOAA and DOE decide to team up for the Ocean Observing Prize?

Moreno: The folks at NOAA are in charge of mapping the ocean floor--one of the big objectives for the Administration is mapping the entire exclusive economic zone--but mapping does not just include geophysical data, it also includes geochemical data throughout the entire water column.

One of the main constraints for this project is researchers don't have enough energy when they are out at sea. It is prohibitively expensive to have a cable or to come back to recharge every one or two days. It was one of the first times we had somebody come in and say “we need green energy for us to do our jobs right now.”

That led to a really vibrant collaboration on this Ocean Observing Prize, and hopefully will lead to more research on how to combine marine energy devices with observing systems.

Q: What’s the response to the Ocean Observing Prize been like so far?

Moreno: We've gotten far more interest than we expected, over 60 responses on the first stage.

We are seeing a huge range of new ideas that we haven't seen before in marine energy. New materials, new configurations, new concepts to get something out in the water and still have it last in a very hands-off way. Stay tuned.

Q: Tell me a little about the theme for the DEVELOP phase and what kind of problems the submissions could help solve?

Moreno: We went through a pretty rigorous process of trying to identify a specific theme for the next phase. We wanted to make sure that those ideas that were most likely to succeed in the DISCOVERY phase had an opportunity to continue on in DEVELOP, so we combined two different themes into one: buoys and autonomous systems.

Even in rough water, UUVs [unmanned underwater vehicles] have the technology to plot their way back to a docking station, but without power at that docking station, they can't stay out very long. So either that docking station is powered by the ship or has to have a cable to shore, which really restricts where you can place it. Or the UUV could use a battery, but then you might need to replace the battery in the middle of a mission.

I asked a guy from a company demonstrating UUVs at a conference, ‘What would you do if you had the means to recharge at the dock itself, without needing a battery or anything else?’ He just paused and said, ‘Well that's easy, I'd retire.’ That really suggests the level of interest and the level of the market potential with this technology.

Q: What are the potential benefits to the American economy beyond advancing scientific discoveries?

Moreno: We believe very strongly that one of the best ways to ensure jobs are created in the U.S. and stay in the U.S. is by having the best technologies created here, and having the markets for those technologies here. And those are two of the main objectives of the American-Made Challenges.

The Challenges bring together a wide range of companies and provide a network to do the work in the U.S., creating a really strong ecosystem of innovation. What that means is a company has everything it needs, from the ideas, to the workspace, to basic services like Human Resources, all in one place so they can do all of their work here in the U.S.

The hope is that even those who don't end up winning the final prize have really found a lot of value throughout the entire process, both in terms of being able to refine their designs, get really strong feedback on it, get support in developing prototypes, and also getting exposure to investors.

Q: What’s next for NOAA and DOE?

Moreno: We don't have any formal agreements, although we are looking at putting one in place. I think that would be very valuable. Ultimately, we are technology developers, and if we don't partner really deeply with the people who are going to use the technologies, we don't know our market. We don't know what we're designing. Working with an agency like NOAA allows us to bring in the end users to collaborate on the design. NOAA has some of their own R&D capabilities as well, so we can also merge our R&D capabilities.

We have had formalized agreements in the past with the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers, who own a lot of the hydropower in the U.S. We've seen huge value there both combining R&D and making sure our R&D is perfectly in tune with the people who are ultimately using the end products. To me that's the biggest value, it takes us out of our technology-specific mindset and allows us to really think about the problems we're trying to solve, and how we can solve those in a way that will be most valuable to the people who are actually dealing with those problems in the field every day.

Interview by: Amber Todoroff and Bridget Williams

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.