Powering the Blue Economy™: Ocean Observing Prize
An entire world exists beneath the waves.
Although great progress has been made in the field of ocean observation in recent years, nearly 80% of our oceans remain unmapped and unexplored. The limited battery life of ocean observation equipment is a fundamental obstacle to continued exploration.
The Powering the Blue Economy™: Ocean Observing Prize hopes to change this.
A joint endeavor of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) and the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS®) program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Ocean Observing Prize is challenging innovators, dreamers, and tinkerers to develop needed technologies to better understand, map, and monitor our oceans.
Ready to take the plunge? Read more about the prize below.
Ocean Observing Prize competitors were tasked with developing concepts that integrated marine renewable energy with ocean observing systems, such as weather buoys, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), meteorological-oceanographic (metoc) buoys, ocean observing cabled arrays, and more. These marine-energy-powered devices will effectively cut the charging cord, enabling longer deployments at sea, resulting in better data capture and a better understanding of our oceans.
The Ocean Observing Prize consists of two competitions designed to accelerate innovation in marine energy and ocean observation.
The first competition, the DISCOVER Competition, which is now closed, solicited novel concepts that integrated ocean observing technologies with marine energy systems.
The second competition, the DEVELOP Competition, focused exclusively on the theme of hurricane monitoring. The challenge theme may vary in future iterations of the prize.
Important Dates
- DISCOVER Competition Open: November 14, 2019
- DISCOVER Competition Closed: February 12, 2019
- DISCOVER Competition Winner Announcement & Awards: April 2, 2020
- DEVELOP Competition Open: October 19, 2020
- DESIGN Contest Open: October 19, 2020
- DESIGN Contest Closed: February 16, 2021
- DESIGN Competition Winner Announcement & Awards: April 19, 2021
- BUILD Contest Open: April 19, 2021
- BUILD Contest Tank Testing: June 2022
- BUILD Contest Winner Announcement & Awards: August 9, 2022
- SPLASH-C Contest TEAMER Request for Technical Support Due: November 4, 2022
- SPLASH-C Contest TEAMER Access Period: February 2023–November 2023
- SPLASH-C Contest Final Submissions Due: January 2024
- SPLASH-C Contest Winner Announcement & Awards: Anticipated February 2024
All dates are subject to change, including contest openings, deadlines, and announcements. Final dates for the SPLASH contest will be posted here and on the HeroX site.
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Ocean Observing Prize Goals
- Enable collection of valuable new data. Proposed innovations should increase the coverage, resolution, and/or types of ocean and atmospheric variables that can be observed, collected, processed, and transmitted, leading to improved understanding, monitoring, and management of the ocean.
- Generate sufficient power from marine resources. Submissions must be able to generate enough power to meet the energy needs of the ocean observing community and prove the viability of marine energy to power ocean observing activities.
- Accelerate commercialization of marine energy systems. Traditionally, marine energy devices developed for the electrical grid can take many years to design, build, and test. The prize aims to accelerate marine energy commercialization by working at smaller scales and zeroing in on the specific energy needs of ocean observing systems.
- Forge a diverse community of innovators. This prize will welcome new innovators into the marine energy and ocean observing space. It will also help form new partnerships and collaborations among industry, academia, and government to create innovative ocean observing technologies powered by marine energy.
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Solutions That Help Shape the Future
The American-Made Challenges Prize platform, administered by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), brings together a world-class research base with an unparalleled entrepreneurial support system—consisting of pioneering university teams, dozens of energy incubators, and 16 national laboratories—to create a sweeping portfolio of innovations primed for private investment and commercial scale-up.
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