US and Denmark Team Up for $4.2M Floating Wind Innovation Call

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO) and Innovation Fund Denmark have announced an intention to release a $4.2 million funding opportunity to advance floating offshore wind energy systems.

The announcement builds on a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between DOE, the Denmark Ministry of Higher Education and Science, the Denmark Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities, and Innovation Fund Denmark signed in 2021.

The proposed funding opportunity will focus on research to improve mooring technologies and methods, which are used to secure floating platforms to the sea floor.

As a joint funding call between the United States and Denmark, the initiative is set to advance the global floating offshore wind industry by encouraging bilateral collaboration to increase the impact of research and development in each country.

WETO and Innovation Fund Denmark are each contributing approximately $2 million. Performing teams must include both U.S. and Danish entities collaborating on each awarded project and should include significant effort from both U.S. and Danish partners.

Also, U.S. applicants must include minority-serving institutions and can involve other U.S. participants.

U.S. DOE and Innovation Fund Denmark expect to seek proposals addressing the following five topic areas:

1. Compatibility strategies for mooring, cabling, and coexistence: Develop methods to reduce the impact of cables and mooring lines on other ocean users and the environment, and to advance opportunities for positive impacts.
2. Mass-producible, high-reliability moorings: Enable mass-production of mooring components at the scale needed to supply floating offshore wind arrays of at least 500 MW of installed capacity.
3. Novel station-keeping systems and components: Research development, demonstration, or commercialization of technology to prevent failures, decrease costs, improve performance, or increase the capacity of floating offshore wind energy mooring systems.
4. Monitoring and inspection technologies for moorings: Develop sensor systems, remote inspection methods, maintenance strategies, and data collection and processing approaches that can better evaluate the health and reliability of subsea components for commercial-scale floating offshore wind energy arrays. 
5. Open Topic: Research and development that more broadly support mooring systems for industry-scale deployment of floating offshore wind energy. This includes, but is not limited to, identification of best practices for holistic design and optimization of floating wind energy systems, and how to co-optimize the turbines, platform, moorings, and control systems.

Four or more awards are expected following the official launch of the funding call set for spring 2024.