The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has unveiled five teams that will advance to the final stage of the Waves to Water Prize, a competition focused on using the power of waves to develop clean energy-powered desalination technologies.
The winners of the CREATE Stage, announced by the U.S. DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), will share a $500,000 prize pool to further develop their technologies that are expected to provide reliable access to fresh water for water-scarce coastal and island communities.
The following CREATE stage winners have qualified for support to build and ship their designs to North Carolina for the final DRINK Stage of the competition:
CREATE is the fourth of the five-stage Waves to Water Prize – a three-year, $3.3 million competition funded by DOE’s Water Power Technologies Office and run by NREL.
Competitors in the CREATE stage had 180 days to build a functional prototype or proof of concept of their system.
East Carolina University’s Coastal Studies Institute partnered with DOE and NREL to host the prize finalists at local landmark Jennette’s Pier in North Carolina in April 2022.
The pier will serve as the competitors’ launch and test site where experts will assess how the final designs perform during a five-day, open-ocean trial.
In the final DRINK Stage, one winning team will earn the $500,000 grand prize for the best overall system, while the other teams can earn smaller prizes – adding up to a combined pool of an additional $500,000, for metrics like highest water production, cleanest water, and simplest deployment.
Through the Waves to Water Prize, DOE seeks to accelerate the development of wave-energy-powered desalination systems and encourage creative, interdisciplinary solutions. The prize pairs world-class researchers with an entrepreneurial support system to prime them for private investment and commercial scale-up.
Kelly Speakes-Backman , acting assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, said: “We will need a broad spectrum of technologies to tackle climate change and deliver the decarbonization goals set out by the Biden-Harris Administration. Through the Waves to Water Prize, we are equipping these entrepreneurs and innovators in marine energy with the resources they need to demonstrate these novel technologies that can increase community resiliency in the face of disaster recovery by producing clean water from the power of the ocean”.