RME Wins Two Grant Awards from the U.S. Department of Energy

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today awarded Resolute Marine Energy (RME) and its project partners Re Vision Consulting and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) funding to pursue two research & development projects. The awards were granted in response to proposals submitted by RME and its partners in response to the DOE’s “SPA 2” Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). RME CEO Bill Staby commented, “With these awards the DOE has, once again, recognized RME’s leadership role in the U.S. marine renewable energy industry.” “Our ability to consistently win non-dilutive funding support from federal, state, regional and local funding sources is tangible evidence of the quality of our technology and the skills and experience of our engineering team.” The first of the two grants continues work started during RME’s “SPA 1” project to investigate advanced control strategies for improving the energy conversion efficiency of RME’s SurgeWEC.TM “Our work with Re Vision and the University of Michigan during SPA 1 yielded some very impressive improvements,” Staby said, “and in SPA 2 the goal is to adapt and test these advanced control polices in real-world settings.” The second of the two grants concerns the development and commercial application of a unique method for converting the bidirectional movements of SurgeWEC into unidirectional rotational motion suitable for driving a pump or motor. Staby commented; “this is a problem common to all wave energy technologies and Dr. Lei Zuo and his team at Virginia Tech may have hit upon a cost effective solution.” Further details of the two grants can be found here