LOI Deadline
Sponsor Deadline
Posted: 7/29/2024

Offshore Wind National and Regional Research and Development

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is being issued by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) on behalf of the Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO), as well as the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE). The goals of this FOA are to:

  • Drives accelerated U.S. floating offshore wind deployment.
  • Aids the transition to fixed-bottom platform concepts that simplify port and vessel constraints.
  • Advances technologies to monitor bird and bat presence and behavior to understand risk to species from offshore wind deployment.
  • Leverages the strengths of the existing industrial base in the Great Lakes region to engage with the national and global offshore wind market.
  • Seeds a university education and research ecosystem to support the technical needs of the U.S. floating offshore wind industry and other stakeholders and develop the next generation of technical leadership for the industry in the United States.
  • Advances the understanding of lightning occurrence and mitigation at offshore wind farms to improve protection from lightning strikes. 

An entity may submit only one Concept Paper and one Full Application for each Topic Area or Subtopic Area of this FOA. Interested applicants from within Duke should contact fundopps@duke.edu as early as possible.

Deadlines:

  • Required Concept Papers: Sep. 3, 2024
  • Full Applications: Nov. 7, 2024
Areas of Interest

Topic Area 1: Floating Offshore Wind Platform Research and Development

  • Subtopic 1a: Refinement and Innovation in Floating Platform Design, Manufacturing, and Deployment 
  • Subtopic 1b: Next-Generation Integrated Turbine/Platform Research

Topic Area 2: Innovation for Fixed-Bottom Offshore Wind Foundation Types and Supporting Infrastructure 

Topic Area 3: Technology Advancement to Inform Risk to Birds and Bats from Offshore Wind Energy

Topic Area 4: Development of a Manufacturing and Supply Chain Offshore Wind Consortium in Great Lakes Region 

Topic Area 5: Floating Offshore Wind Center of Excellence 

Topic Area 6: Protecting Future Offshore Wind Farms against Lightning

Eligibility Requirements

The proposed prime recipient and subrecipient(s) must be domestic entities. The following types of domestic entities are eligible to participate as a prime recipient or subrecipient for Topic Areas 1-4 and 6 of this FOA: 1. Institutions of higher education; 2. For-profit entities; 3. Nonprofit entities; and 4. State and local governmental entities and federally recognized Indian Tribes (Indian Tribes).

For Topic Area 5, eligibility for prime recipients is restricted to domestic institutions of higher education or consortia led by a domestic institution of higher education.

Amount Description

EERE expects to make a total of approximately $48.6 M of federal funding available for new awards under this FOA, subject to the availability of appropriated funds. EERE anticipates making approximately 12 to 21 awards under this FOA. EERE may issue one, multiple, or no awards. Individual awards may vary between $200K and $5M.