WPTO gives funding for four projects

Four projects that span four states will get nearly $4.4 million in funding from the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s (EERE’s) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO).

The funding is a part of the $54.5 million investment in Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) research and development projects announced by Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette.

Projects selected are receiving Phase II Release 2 grants for innovations that demonstrate technical feasibility during the first phase of their research.

WPTO will fund the following companies and projects:

• Pliant Energy Systems (Brooklyn, NY): This project plans to harness the kinetic energy flowing through streams and rivers to directly power a novel mechanical pump. The first product will be a pump that draws both water and energy from a flowing water source for irrigation. If successful, this technology will be used for desalination and electricity generation.
• Ocean Renewable Power Company (Portland, ME): This project plans to use tidal energy to offset diesel fuel use on an Alaskan microgrid. Working with the City of False Pass, Alaska, ORPC will develop scalable applications of marine renewable energy as a baseload power source to completely replace diesel generators for renewable microgrid operations.
• Oscilla Power (Seattle, WA): This project will couple a farm of innovative offshore wave energy converters with a novel under water energy storage system to provide reliable and high-quality utility power from wave energy. This new approach will allow the electrical system costs to be minimized, while increasing the consistency of the power output.
• Resolute Marine Energy (Boston, MA): This project plans to design, build, test, and validate a scaled version of a variable displacement linkage pump device. Testing and evaluation will be conducted on components of the pump prior to a functional, scaled prototype. The prototype will be integrated within a laboratory-scale desalination system and powered using a power takeoff test stand to simulate ocean waves in a series of hardware-in-the-loop, dry laboratory tests.

The SBIR/STTR programs were created by Congress to leverage small businesses to advance innovation at federal agencies.