(CLOSED) DE-FOA-0002080 DOE EERE Water Power Technologies Office 2019

Webinar: An informational webinar will be held on April 11, 2019 at 12:00 PM EST. Use this link and meeting number to access the webinar at that time: Join Webex meeting

Meeting number (access code): 905 054 173 Join by phone 1-415-527-5035

A copy of the webinar presentation will be added to the "Documents" below as soon as possible after the webinar.

Background Purpose:

The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) is issuing, on behalf of the Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO), a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) titled “Water Power Technologies Office 2019 Research Funding Opportunity.” This FOA addresses priorities in the following areas: hydropower operational flexibility, low-head hydropower and in-stream hydrokinetic technologies, advancing wave energy device design, and research infrastructure upgrades at the National Marine Renewable Energy Centers (NMRECs).

Hydropower and Marine and Hydrokinetic (MHK) energy technologies are renewable sources of electricity that support EERE goals of increasing energy affordability, domestic economic prosperity, and energy security while enhancing the reliability and resiliency of the U.S. power grid. The priorities of this FOA also align with long-term targets for performance improvements and cost reductions of these technologies established to meet requirements of the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993 and the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010.

The goals of this FOA also align with other DOE priorities:

• EERE’s Beyond Batteries initiative in the President’s FY19 budget request and Department-wide storage initiatives, which focus on improving the capabilities of technologies to deliver value to the grid such as temporal flexibility and resiliency; and
• Strengthening U.S. manufacturing and increasing manufacturing competitiveness.

Hydropower has provided the U.S. with sustainable, reliable, and affordable power for over 100 years, and there are still many promising untapped opportunities. In addition to the economic benefits of providing cost-competitive and clean electricity, the flexible nature of hydropower makes it among the most valuable forms of generation, capable of providing the full range of flexibility and essential reliability services required by the electrical bulk-power system. The flexibility and storage capacity of hydroelectric power plants make them efficient and economical in supporting the integration of variable sources of renewable energy, such as wind or solar photovoltaics. Pumped storage hydropower (PSH) can additionally be used to store excess variable generation, further contributing to grid reliability, reducing the curtailment of other generation sources, and supporting the integration of a larger share of variable generation resources. While improved understanding and utilization of the flexible capabilities of hydropower can enable greater grid reliability and resilience, another focus of this FOA is adding additional new hydropower capacity by supporting innovative technology development. Low-head hydropower resources are widespread, but will require a number of technology innovations and new design philosophies in order to be cost-effectively and sustainably developed. Investments made in this FOA in hydropower technology research and development (R&D) for innovative standardized and modular approaches to low-head hydropower development will lead to lower overall project costs versus traditional, custom-designed projects at greenfield sites; and increasing the flexibility of hydropower and pumped storage can lead to a stronger, more resilient grid and reduced system-wide costs to ensuring reliability.

MHK technologies convert the energy of waves, tides, and river and ocean currents into electricity and have the potential to provide millions of Americans with locally sourced, clean, and reliable energy. MHK resources are predictable and forecastable with a generation profile complementary to other renewable energy resources such as onshore wind and solar, which can enhance its contributions to grid resilience and reliability. To advance the state of MHK technologies, additional research, development, and testing infrastructure are needed to support long-term objectives for harnessing the power of the Nation’s oceans and rivers. Advancements of in-stream hydrokinetic technologies provide more options for developing the diverse set of riverine resources in the U.S.; river MHK applications of particular interest are devices that would function well in remote communities dependent on costly diesel fuel for power. A number of wave energy device designs will also be advanced to the point where they would be ready to move forward with fabrication and open-water ocean testing at grid-connected wave energy test sites, and research and testing infrastructure will be improved at the nation’s National Marine Renewable Energy Centers. The investments made through this FOA will increase energy affordability by achieving improvements in design, prototyping, and testing in wave, tidal, ocean and in-river current technologies, ultimately leading to reduced costs and increased competitiveness of marine energy devices.

Technology and Strategic Goals:

The Water Power Technologies Office 2019 Research Funding Opportunity covers priorities in both the Hydropower Subprogram and Marine and Hydrokinetics Subprogram.

Area of Interest 1 - Hydropower Operational Flexibility

Hydropower has significant capabilities for flexible operation, making it well-positioned to contribute to system reliability and resilience in an evolving electricity system. Many hydroelectric plants are dispatchable, can alter generation output on demand, provide a range of ancillary services as well as capacity (in the form of stored water and unit headroom) over various time horizons, and stabilize the grid to maintain reliable and cost-effective electric service. DOE efforts such as the Hydropower Vision Report show that hydropower already delivers flexibility services in many regions, but much less data exists about the full extent of potential flexibility services that hydropower plants could provide. The complexity of multi-use constraints affecting many hydropower plants, together with the wide variability in plant configurations across the fleet, make understanding the fleet’s potential for flexibility a formidable challenge. Specifically, there is a lack of comprehensive understanding among hydropower owners and operators of the breadth of hydropower components that can enable flexible capabilities (broadly including machines, water flows, and cascading system attributes) as well as how these separate components can provide specific flexibility services.

To address these challenges, Area of Interest (AOI) 1a, Quantify Hydropower Capabilities for Operational Flexibility, seeks a comprehensive framework to catalog and account for the different types of flexibility that hydropower plants can provide. This framework would then be applied to individual hydropower plants in order to build up a “benchmark” of the available flexibility potential present in the U.S. hydropower fleet. Concurrent with the development and application of the framework, AOI 1b, Operational Strategies for Increasing Hydropower Flexibility, seeks research and development of operational strategies that enable enhanced provision of flexibility services at individual hydropower plants or combinations of plants within the fleet. Operational strategies could include innovative application of commercial or near-commercial sensors and controls, as well as machine learning or other data-driven analytics to unlock new flexible capabilities. To develop such a framework and identify operational strategies, the hydropower community must be an active partner. AOI 1 of this funding opportunity is therefore designed to (1) solicit industry-led research to comprehensively understand and assess the flexibility within the fleet, and (2) solicit innovative industry-led techniques to increase flexibility present in the existing fleet.

AOI 1 builds on substantial foundational work by WPTO on understanding hydropower’s capabilities to support grid reliability and resilience. Congressional appropriations language has also specifically requested work on PSH technologies and techno-economic valuations, both of which require deep understanding of flexible plant capabilities. Responses to WPTO’s Request for Information (RFI) on “Expanding Hydropower and Pumped Storage’s Contribution to Grid Resiliency and Reliability,” received in April 2018, showed strong industry interest in enabling new, more flexible roles for hydropower that support a rapidly changing electricity system. The RFI submissions offered examples of hydropower plants that have changed their operations to cycle more frequently in recent years, underscoring the need for WPTO to understand and support advancement of the fleet’s flexible capabilities. WPTO is advancing several research projects within its national laboratories to build understanding of flexible capabilities. This includes a Hydropower Value Studysurveying hydropower operations, costs, and possible future system states, which will include categorization of machine and water characteristics, as well as illuminating case studies of flexible operation that can inform efforts under AOI 1. WPTO also supports the Hydropower Fleet Intelligence effort to organize and draw insight from hydropower asset condition, cost, and availability data, including impacts of more flexible operations. AOI 1 of this funding opportunity will also draw from and inform DOE-wide efforts such as Beyond Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), which seeks to develop new metrics and frameworks to understand flexibility and other system values that various generation resources can provide.

Area of Interest 2 – Low-Head Hydropower and In-Stream Hydrokinetic Technologies

Low-head hydropower and hydrokinetic river current energy converter (CEC) technologies have the potential to generate a significant amount of electricity from the Nation’s rivers and to support the resiliency of the U.S. electricity system. A 2012 DOE supported study calculated that theoretical river hydrokinetic resources (i.e. the energy contained in the natural flow of a river) were roughly 1,381 TWh/year, while the 2016 Hydropower Vision Report identified that approximately 17 GW of new stream-reach hydropower capacity development could be possible if technologies that balance efficiency, economics, and environmental sustainability were developed.

Riverine resources, which can be developed with either hydropower or hydrokinetic technologies, are very functionally and geographically diverse. Low-head hydropower and hydrokinetic technologies are fundamentally different approaches to generating energy from the same resources, but are best-suited to different types of locations based on a number of physical attributes of rivers (namely “head” which is the elevation change within a river, amounts and speeds of river flow, and depth). For example, based on the prior studies identified above, four hydrologic regions with significant hydrokinetic potential included the lower Mississippi, Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, and the Ohio River, while five regions with particularly significant hydropower resources included the Pacific Northwest, Missouri, California, Arkansas-White-Red, and Ohio River basins.

To most effectively make use of these diverse river resources, WPTO is supporting the development of two types of technologies – standard modular hydropower (SMH) and current energy converters (CEC). CEC technologies extract kinetic energy from rivers without the need for a dam or diversion, whereas SMH technologies use structures to create hydraulic head and generate power through a turbine. CEC technologies potentially have multiple market applications, including electricity generation for remote communities or other areas where installation of larger civil works is difficult or prohibitively costly. SMH can deliver the benefits of hydropower at lower cost and with greater environmental benefits by leveraging standardized and modular component designs that are more easily and cheaply manufactured. In tandem, SMH shifts the design philosophy from custom-designing every facility to extract the greatest amount of energy possible and then mitigating impacts, to focus on first sustaining the important hydrologic, hydraulic, geomorphic, physiochemical, and ecologic processes that occur in streams and watersheds. SMH technologies can also be leveraged to provide additional co-benefits beyond energy generation, such as water quality enhancement, invasive species control, hydrologic restoration, and recreation opportunities.

SMH and CEC technologies are still in the preliminary stages of development and must be developed further for their potential to provide power from the Nation’s rivers to be fully realized. Recent trends reflect the steep challenges to the conventional new stream-reach hydropower development approach: over the past ten years, hydropower capacity increases have come predominantly from upgrades to existing facilities, powering of non-powered dams, and energy recovery in conduit facilities, while only five small new stream-reach hydropower projects were completed, none of which involved construction of a large impoundment dam. And to date, no commercial, grid-tied CEC projects have come online in the United States.

To capture these resources, both through CEC and hydropower technologies, innovation is needed to reduce the costs of these systems and further demonstrate their value to the grid. For MHK, this includes building upon previous work on CEC rotor and generation technologies, including via the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs; for hydropower, R&D and testing is needed to advance existing SMH technologies and develop new innovative technologies (based on previously developed design criteria by ORNL), that can efficiently and responsibly generate electricity from new stream-reach resources.

AOI 2 builds on previous component level R&D and will support the development of full systems that utilize advanced manufacturing techniques and modular designs that help CEC and SMH technologies achieve performance and cost reduction targets. Further, to ensure that AOI 2 significantly advances the state of the CEC and SMH industries, projects are required to not only design and fabricate prototype devices, but also that these devices be tested in a realistic operating environment.

AOI 2a, Modular Technologies for Low-Head Hydropower Applications, will focus on the design and testing of entirely new standardized, modular hydropower technologies for low-head, new stream-reach (i.e., greenfield) sites, including designs for generation, fish passage, sediment passage, recreational passage, water passage, and foundation modules. New stream-reach sites are characterized by low heads, varying flows, and valued river functions and attributes that must be protected and preserved. The 2016 Hydropower Vision Report predicted that no new stream-reach projects will be deployed without the emergence of innovative—even transformational—advances in technologies that address these challenges. This is what Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL) SMH Technology Acceleration project, which has been focused on developing functional requirements and design envelopes for SMH technologies, has been working to achieve.

SMH is a new design paradigm that places the functionalities of a stream that must be preserved at the forefront of the design process, while also utilizing standardization and modularity principles to reduce site specificity and project costs. Historically, hydropower projects have been custom-designed and built with the objectives of maximizing the potential generation that facilities could produce, and then designs or mitigations are adjusted to deal with potential impacts. With SMH, component and project design first consider how opportunities for energy generation fit into the other multi-functional needs and uses of a river, and then project cost reductions are achieved by utilizing standard technologies and solutions that scale widely across many sites and reduce the reliance on site-specific and custom-designed equipment and structures. Construction costs are further reduced by envisioning facilities as a combination of individual modules that are easily manufactured, transported, and assembled on site. This presents a challenging undertaking, as new modular technologies need to account for many different site characteristics in the design criteria in order to be broadly applicable. In fiscal years 2016 and 2017, ORNL conducted the necessary foundational research and produced the SMH Exemplary Design Envelope Specification (EDES, or the Design Envelope), a document outlining the objectives, requirements, constraints, and performance of standard hydropower modules.

In 2018, WPTO took the first step towards engaging the private sector in the practical engineering application of the Design Envelope and SMH principles by releasing funding opportunity DE-FOA-0001836 titled Facility Design Concepts for Standard Modular Hydropower Development to adapt existing modular technologies into the design of small, low-head hydropower facilities. In this FOA’s AOI 2a, WPTO is soliciting entirely new modular hydropower technologies, with a focus on those that utilize advanced manufacturing techniques. In future years, WPTO and ORNL plan to advance the SMH principles beyond new-stream reach development and apply them to non-powered dam facility design.

The projects supported in this area of interest will focus on the design and testing of new standardized, modular hydropower technologies for low-head applications (30 feet or less). Applications must include innovative designs for generation, fish passage, sediment passage, recreation passage, water passage, or foundation modules that leverage advanced manufacturing techniques and materials. The purpose of the awards is to bring technology concepts through validation of the concept through simulation and partial- or full-scale testing in a laboratory or relevant environment.

AOI 2b, Modular Technologies for River Current Energy Converter Applications, will support efforts to develop CEC technologies that can responsibly and cost-effectively harness the Nation’s riverine resources, leading to improved resiliency and diversity of the Nation’s energy generation system. CEC technologies may ultimately be easier and more cost effective to deploy in the many regions of the United States, especially in remote locations, that lack robust port infrastructure and vessel availability. But there are many technical challenges remaining before these potential opportunities can be realized. The DOE Reference Model Report identifies deployment (moorings, power cables, and device installation), operations, and maintenance as the most important cost drivers for CECs, while suggesting that improving other components, such as rotors and drivetrains, does not provide as much cost savings potential. WPTO has previously supported R&D projects that have developed and tested components, control strategies, and generator technologies, and one CEC system prototype project. However, today’s CEC systems still require potentially complicated installation, operation, and maintenance (IO&M) strategies.

To address the capability gaps in today’s river CEC technologies, AOI 2b, Modular Technologies for River Current Energy Converter Applications focuses on developing and testing CEC systems that can be efficiently deployed and retrieved without the need for significant port or on-site infrastructure and specialized vessels. Successful projects will expand the number and geographic diversity of locations where CEC technologies are commercially viable, while simultaneously advancing the state of CEC technologies. Further, AOI 2b requires the development and use of modular system designs, enabling CEC projects to be easily optimized for a wide range of deployment locations and electricity load needs. AOI 2b projects will design, fabricate, and open-water test modular CEC river system that incorporate and advance IO&M techniques which require only limited use of port and vessel infrastructure.

Area of Interest 3 - Advancing Wave Energy Device Design

Wave energy converter (WEC) technologies are still in the early stages of development, and the nascent industry has yet to deploy and test cost competitive utility-scale WEC technologies. Given the current state of the industry, WPTO’s portfolio contains a broad spectrum of foundational R&D activities aimed at advancing the industry on all fronts towards commercialization. Over the last decade, WPTO has supported work on numerical modeling, tank and laboratory testing of scaled models, materials development and characterization, component design optimization, integrated control systems engineering, and some limited full-scale systems testing. Through this work, significant advances in wave energy device designs have been realized and WPTO is beginning to focus on open-water testing of larger systems in order to advance WEC technologies. These efforts are in direct support of expanding and diversifying the Nation’s energy portfolio and are a critical step on the way to developing both grid-scale and distributed power generation WEC systems. WPTO investment in R&D allows the domestic wave energy industry to advance and achieve cost competitiveness with local hurdle rates in high-cost markets, while working towards the long-term goal of cost competitiveness at the utility scale. This will be accomplished by focusing on early-stage R&D that has potential to increase energy capture and annual energy production of devices, improve reliability and availability, and reduce capital and operating/maintenance costs if further developed and deployed by industry.

To enable the critical testing needed to further advance early-stage WEC technologies, the WPTO recently made a significant investment in the PacWave-South wave energy test facility that is being constructed off the coast of Newport, Oregon. This facility will provide the wave energy industry with access to a pre-permitted, fully-energetic, and grid connected deep water testing facility that enables full scale system performance testing, thus helping to accelerate the development and improvement of wave energy technologies. The facility will play a critical role in demonstrating wave energy systems in the ocean environment and will help improve the efficiency and reliability of utility scale wave energy devices. The PacWave-South test site is currently scheduled to be operational in 2022-23 and will provide the ability to simultaneously test up to twenty wave energy devices while providing access to the technical expertise and infrastructure support required by the wave energy industry.

Projects funded under AOI 3 will be the first step in WPTO’s efforts to support designing, building, and testing WEC systems in the fully energetic wave environment similar to PacWave-South conditions. This type of full-scale testing in the open ocean is required to accurately access device performance due to limitations inherent in laboratory testing at reduced scales and in simulated wave environments. Lessons learned and data collected during PacWave-South tests will be used to inform the next generation device designs to expeditiously advance wave energy technologies. However, before devices can be tested at PacWave-South, robust system designs that satisfy rigorous engineering requirements and technical standards must be developed to ensure reliable device operation in highly energetic wave climates. The wave energy at the PacWave-South test site is on average four times more energetic than the Wave Energy Test Site (WETS) in Kaneohe, Hawaii, and will provide the forceful conditions necessary to rigorously test the resiliency of devices.

This AOI will generate new designs based on previous WEC projects funded by the WPTO. These previous projects have enabled the MHK industry to progressively test new designs for both WEC components and systems to enable the performance and reliability improvements required for cost reductions. The WPTO wave energy portfolio has evolved from the FY13 and FY15 System Performance Advancement (SPA) FOAs that focused specifically on component level advancements in controls, structures and power takeoffs (PTOs), to the FY17 and FY18 FOAs that are focused primarily on innovation and design improvements at the system level. This iterative and systematic design process is necessary to achieve the program goals for continuous improvements in LCOE.

Designing WEC systems that meet rigorous MHK design standards is the explicit goal of AOI 3 and is also a critical step on the path to grid-scale WEC technology commercialization. The system designs will be verified through rigorous design reviews performed by WPTO and national laboratories so that, at the completion of AOI 3 projects, system designs will be developed to the point where they could be fabricated, deployed, and tested at a test site like PacWave-South. Applicants must propose detailed work plans to develop WEC designs that are capable of two years of continuous testing and operations at PacWave-South test site utilizing the physical characteristics and wave climate at that location. The designs must incorporate the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Technical Specifications (TS) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standards to ensure that designs are final and fully ready to utilize for future shipyard fabrication and open-water testing via future funding opportunities. The development of international standards is critical to increase investor and stakeholder confidence, and reduce project insurance costs, by incorporating best practices developed in related marine industries that have proven designs and operations.

Some of requirements for the final design report include engineer approved design drawings with supporting load calculations and power performance estimates with supporting tank testing results. The complete list of final report requirements is contained within the body of the specific Advancing Wave Energy Device Design AOI 3 section of this FOA.

Though the WEC device must be designed to operate reliably within the expected sea states for the PacWave-South test site, the developer is not required to design a device that is optimized for power production within the PacWave-South wave environment. As part of this project, the developer is required to prepare a commercialization plan that describes the intended market for the WEC device and the differences in the device dimensions, power rating, and other relevant characteristics for this market.

Area of Interest 4 - Marine Energy Centers Research Infrastructure Upgrades

As the marine renewable energy industry continues to advance technologies towards commercialization, there is an ongoing need for testing at all levels of technological development. Testing MHK technologies is inherently more complex and time consuming than for land-based energy generation technologies. The already slow pace of design and in-water testing cycles is further exacerbated by the limited availability of testing infrastructure at various scales, complex and time consuming permitting processes, and expensive environmental monitoring. These challenges have to-date severely limited the ability of technology developers to quickly assess the performance of devices and components, innovate solutions where necessary, and deploy the next generation of devices. Due to the complex physics of the ocean wave and current environments, MHK prototypes must be tested in real-world environments to fully characterize their performance and reliability. These challenges associated with testing, deploying, and optimizing technologies in a time and cost-effective manner must be overcome in order to accelerate the pace of MHK technology development.

At the direction of Congress, WPTO originally partnered with five universities to create three distinct National Marine Renewable Energy Centers (NMRECs) to incubate advanced MHK technologies. These three centers – Pacific Marine Energy Center (PMEC) formerly known as the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center (NNMREC), operated jointly by Oregon State University, the University of Washington, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks; Hawaii National Marine Renewable Energy Center (HINMREC), operated by the University of Hawaii; and Southeast National Marine Renewable Energy Center (SNMREC), operated by Florida Atlantic University – were competitively selected and launched at U.S. universities, each with unique research and testing capabilities to address the most pressing questions for new marine energy technology development. WPTO investments in the test centers have helped address the broad spectrum of R&D needs of the MHK industry to include the design and fabrication of an ocean buoy to support open water systems testing at PMEC, ocean instrumentation at HINMREC in support of WETS operations, and development of open ocean current testing infrastructure at SNMREC.

At this time, open water testing capabilities are limited for all variations of MHK technologies (wave, ocean current, tidal, river current). Gaps also exist in smaller scale wave tank testing and power take-off (PTO) testing. The principal goal of this AOI is to address some of these testing needs and focus on MHK industry associated device testing. In some cases, a new capability is required, and in other cases, upgrades to existing facilities or equipment are required to enable higher fidelity testing in support of industry needs.

This AOI will support efforts to upgrade infrastructure at the NMRECS in order to help reduce technical barriers for further MHK technology research. Providing industry with access to an economical, world-class infrastructure at Marine Renewable Energy Centers is an important part of WPTO’s long-term MHK strategy. There is a distinct inefficiency associated with developers independently investing in either their own or separate testing facilities, and through strategic investments, AOI 4 will enhance and enable broader industry usage of testing facilities while reducing costs to both developers and to the WPTO.

Summary of FOA Areas of Interest and Funding

Cost Sharing

The cost share must be at least 20% of the total allowable costs for research and development projects (i.e., the sum of the Government share, including FFRDC costs if applicable, and the recipient share of allowable costs equals the total allowable cost of the project) and must come from non-federal sources unless otherwise allowed by law. (See 2 CFR 200.306 and 2 CFR 910.130 for the applicable cost sharing requirements.)

PLEASE NOTE: Section 108, “Short-Term Cost-Share Pilot Program” of the recently enacted Department of Energy Research and Innovation Act (RIA), Pub. L. 115-246 removes the minimum statutory cost share requirement for Institutions of Higher Education and Non-Profit Organizations for research and development for a two year pilot period. Nevertheless, RIA does not automatically change the cost share requirements as set forth in 2 CFR 910.130 of DOE’s financial assistance regulation without first amending the regulation. Therefore, until the regulation is updated and aligned with RIA or a cost share waiver is issued, DOE programs and Contracting Officers must adhere to the cost share requirements as set forth in 2 CFR 910.130 and the FOA.

For more information, see the FOA.

Eligibility:

Penn State may only submit one Concept Paper and one Full Application for interest area 3 of this FOA. This limitation does not prohibit an applicant from collaborating on other applications (e.g., as a potential Subrecipient or partner) ) so long as the entity is only listed as the applicant on one Concept Paper and one Full Application submitted under this area of interest.

EERE makes an independent assessment of each Concept Paper based on the criteria in Section V.A.i of the FOA. EERE will encourage a subset of applicants to submit Full Applications. An applicant who receives a “discouraged” notification may still submit a Full Application. EERE will review all eligible Full Applications. However, by discouraging the submission of a Full Application, EERE intends to convey its lack of programmatic interest in the proposed project in an effort to save the applicant the time and expense of preparing an application that is unlikely to be selected for award negotiations. Other applicants will be discouraged from submitting a Full Application.

You must notify the Limited Submissions Office with EERE notification since only one Full Application for interest area 3 from Penn State may be submitted.