US Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) has invited public to offer feedback on a draft report that details the current economic and technical landscapes for 12 maritime markets where applications may exist for marine energy technologies.
The draft report, titled Potential Maritime Markets for Marine and Hydrokinetic Technologies, is an initial identification of potential applications for marine energy and information gathered to date.
In 2017, the WPTO’s Marine and Hydrokinetic Program initiated a project committed to fact-finding and due diligence, identifying and studying the range of potential applications and markets for marine and hydrokinetic technologies.
WPTO’s intent is to catalog information, perform analyses, and publish a report that identifies and outlines the potential opportunities and challenges for marine renewable energy in a range of different maritime applications and markets.
The identified maritime market sectors, which are not traditional WPTO partners, have been engaged to learn about their needs, aspirations, and constraints, the draft report states.
The maritime markets discussed in the draft report are ocean observations, unmanned underwater vehicles/autonomous underwater vehicles recharge, data centers, high cost utility grids, isolated community grids, canal power, aquaculture, algae, desalination of seawater, seawater mining, shoreline protection, and disaster relief and recovery.
Each application overview is organized into a summary, a description, a market overview, potential value proposition, and a path to market.
The research conducted to date illuminates the fact that marine renewable energy has some intrinsic strengths and advantages in certain marine and coastal environments, according to WPTO.
As marine and hydrokinetic technologies meet evolving application and economic requirements, different markets could be realized, and, potentially, even enabled by these marine energy technologies.
The public can share their views on the draft report by June 26, 2018.