On April 2, 2014 EERE’s Wind Program announced a funding opportunity entitled “Technology Incubator for Wind Energy Innovations.” This funding opportunity will fund R&D investments in technology approaches and solutions that are not currently represented in the Wind Program’s existing project portfolio.

As an organization, EERE focuses on achieving aggressive and well-defined mid-to-long term clean energy goals by establishing multi-year plans and roadmaps. By focusing its resources on a limited number of projects that have the “highest probability for success,” EERE ensures that program initiatives are supported at their critical mass, both in terms of dollars and time in an effort to produce the project’s maximum impact. Being that this roadmap-based strategy leaves little room for the exploration of new pathways and approaches, this funding opportunity will allow EERE to assess new technologies for their potential to be “on-ramped” to future program R&D portfolios.


This funding opportunity encompasses applications for any and all ideas that have a significant potential to advance the mission of the Wind Program.  While all non-incremental, high-impact ideas are welcome, the program has identified a nonexclusive list of possible topic areas where innovative ideas would have significant potential to enhance its wind research goals:

  • Novel Measurement Techniques for Turbine-Wake Measurements: The Wind Program is interested in exploring robust non-invasive wake measurement technologies that can be deployed in wind farms, are environmentally safe, and are capable of measuring wake velocities, meandering, and added turbulence.
  • Energy Capture Above 500 Feet: The Wind Program is interested in exploring innovative R&D projects that enable low cost wind energy capture above 500 feet, meet the Wind and Water Power Technologies Office levelized cost of energy goals for wind, and are scalable to gigawatt deployments.
  • Remote Sensing Concepts for Wind Resource Assessment & Characterization: In order to fully explore the physics impacting offshore wind, the Wind Program is seeking low-cost, environmentally-safe, and weather-proof sensor packages that can be deployed for long periods of time on future offshore sites for resource monitoring during pre-installation site assessment as well as during normal operation.
  • Prognostic Structural Health Monitoring: The Wind Program is interested in exploring low-cost, innovative technologies that enable prognostic health monitoring for premature failure and fault detection, proactive fault mitigation, predictive operations and maintenance scheduling, and improved survivability of wind power generation equipment.

Read the full Funding Opportunity Announcement on the Department of Energy’s Funding Opportunity Exchange. On April 17, 2014, from 1:00 – 3:00 PM MDT the Wind Program will hold a live webinar to provide information to potential applicants for this Funding Opportunity Announcement. There is no cost to participate and all applicants are encouraged to attend.

The Wind Program offers two unique ways to stay informed. To receive information regarding financial opportunities and timely news updates, please subscribe to the Wind Program’s Breaking News Alerts. To receive more detailed wind research updates and recent publications, please subscribe to the Wind Program’s R&D Newsletter.