US and Denmark partner on $4.2 million floating wind innovation call

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Wind Energy Technology Office (WETO) and the Danish Innovation Fund announced their intention to award $4.2 million in funding opportunities to advance floating offshore wind energy systems.

This announcement builds on a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in 2021 between the DOE, the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science, the Danish Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities, and the Danish Innovation Fund.

The proposed funding opportunity will focus on research to improve mooring techniques and methods used to secure floating platforms to the seabed.

As a joint U.S.-Denmark fundraising initiative, the initiative aims to advance the global floating offshore wind industry by encouraging bilateral collaboration to increase the impact of research and development in each country. Masu.

WETO and the Danish Innovation Fund are each contributing about $2 million. The implementation team must include both U.S. and Danish organizations collaborating on each awarded project and must include significant effort from both U.S. and Danish partners.

U.S. applicants must also include institutions that serve ethnic minorities and may include other U.S. participants.

The U.S. Department of Energy and the Danish Innovation Fund will seek proposals that address five thematic areas:

1. Compatibility strategies for moorings, cables, and coexistence: Develop ways to reduce the impact of cables and mooring lines on other marine users and the environment, and promote opportunities for positive impact.
2. Manufacturable and reliable mooring equipment: Enables the mass production of mooring components at the scale required to supply floating offshore wind arrays with an installed capacity of at least 500 MW.
3. New Station Maintenance Systems and Components: Research and development, demonstration, or commercialization of technologies to prevent failure, reduce cost, improve performance, or increase capacity of floating offshore wind energy mooring systems.
4. Mooring Equipment Monitoring and Inspection Technologies: Developing sensor systems, remote inspection methods, maintenance strategies, and data collection and processing approaches that can better assess the health and reliability of subsea components of commercial-scale floating offshore wind arrays. Masu.
5. Open topic: Research and development to support broader mooring systems for industry-scale deployment of floating offshore wind energy. This includes, but is not limited to, identifying best practices for the overall design and optimization of floating wind energy systems, and how to co-optimize turbines, platforms, moorings, and control systems. yeah.

Four more awards are expected after the official launch of the funding round, scheduled for spring 2024.