At-a-Glance

Eight companies working on technological advancements in clean energy have been awarded millions in federal funding to help scale up production on innovations that would streamline sectors such as offshore wind and pumped storage. For more, read DOE awards $100 million for innovative floating wind, pumped storage and other emerging clean energy tech.

Key Takeaways

  • Recipients of funding from the Seeding Critical Advances for Leading Energy technologies with Untapped Potential (SCALEUP) are described as “disruptive new technologies” that will be transformational for the industry. The funds will “catalyze” commercialization of the technologies so they can be “broadly deployed.”
  • DOE cited Kent Houston Offshore Engineering’s two floating offshore wind turbine technologies as “disruptive,” noting that the company’s focus on designing more efficient turbines and lowering fabrication costs will lead to floating wind farms producing cheaper electricity while reaching profitability.
  • Quidnet Energy will use DOE funding to scale up its geomechanical pumped storage technology into a system that can be used commercially. Its technology uses subsurface rock layers to avoid some of the limits and expense of traditional pumped storage.
  • The first utility to make use of Quidnet Energy’s technology will be CPS Energy, San Antonio’s municipal utility and the largest one in the U.S.

Path to 100% Perspective

Investments in clean energy technology, like DOE’s SCALEUP funding, are important for bringing innovative decarbonization technologies to scale. A variety of technologies will have a role to play along the Path to 100%, including wind and pumped storage. The missing piece of the puzzle is viable long-term storage technologies which will be needed to provide megawatts of capacity and megawatt hours of energy during long duration seasonal conditions or unexpected renewable droughts. Power-to-X technology is a promising solution, using renewable energy sources like wind and solar to produce green hydrogen and other sustainable fuels that can be used for affordable long-term storage. We look forward to seeing how these eight companies will “disrupt” clean energy tech with their innovations.