The US Department of Energy is inviting companies and researchers to apply for grants to support offshore wind demonstration projects, it said Wednesday.
"DOE seeks to provide support for offshore wind advanced technology demonstration projects through collaborative partnerships," the department said in a notice in Wednesday's Federal Register. "The primary goal of the demonstration projects is to expedite the development and deployment of innovative offshore wind energy systems with a strong potential for lowering the levelized cost of energy toward DOE's 2020 goal of 10 [cents]/kWh."
The agency has set a February 7 meeting in Washington to gather input on the upcoming funding opportunity announcement. Preliminary details of the announcement will be posted online Friday, and a final solicitation will be available by the end of the month, DOE said.
The grants are part of a broader Obama administration effort to promote offshore wind development, which advocates view as a key to increasing renewable energy penetration, especially in population-dense East Coast states. DOE last year distributed $26.5 million to 19 offshore wind technology projects and $16.5 million to 22 "market-barrier removal" projects, according to the Federal Register notice.
DOE did not say how much would be available for the advanced technology funding round.
Reducing offshore wind costs to 10 cents/kWh, as DOE hopes to do by the end of the decade, will require cutting current costs about in half.
National Grid signed a 24.4 cents/kWh PPA with developer Deepwater Wind, which is planning a 28.8-MW wind farm in state waters offshore Rhode Island that is expected to begin construction later this year. And the utility has agreed to purchase half the power from the 463-MW Cape Wind project, planned for federal waters offshore Massachusetts, for 18.7 cents/kWh.
