This is an excerpt from the Third Quarter 2012 edition of the Wind Program R&D Newsletter.

In 2011, the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Wind Program, in coordination with the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, released the National Offshore Wind Strategy, which lays out a detailed plan to support responsible deployment of offshore wind energy facilities in U.S. coastal waters and helps to shape the federal government's role in this effort. The Strategy identifies three key areas of activity in order to reach offshore wind deployment scenarios of 10 gigawatts (GW) by 2020 and 54 GW by 2030:

• Develop innovative technologies that lower the cost of energy of offshore wind plant systems
• Remove market barriers to facilitate deployment and reduce technical challenges
• Demonstrate advanced technologies that validate innovative designs and verify full system performance and costs under real operating and market conditions.

In less than two years, the Wind Program is well on its way down the path laid out by the National Offshore Wind Strategy. In 2011, DOE announced 41 projects in the areas of offshore wind technology development and market barrier removal, totaling more than $43 million in DOE funding. Each of the projects targets a specific knowledge gap identified in the market and industry analyses that were conducted when preparing the National Strategy. These projects are diverse in scope and represent a broad range of geographic and technical interests: they aim to more accurately characterize wind resources, monitor and protect marine and avian life near wind farms; optimize ports, vessels, and supply chains for offshore wind farm construction and installation; and better integrate wind energy into existing electrical grid infrastructure. In addition, these projects work to build larger turbines that capture more energy, lead to a greater understanding of the interactions between hurricanes and ice with turbines in the Atlantic Ocean and Great Lakes, and create open source design and analysis tools that will better enable industry to develop and deploy integrated offshore wind systems.

Keeping in line with the direction set forth by the National Offshore Wind Strategy, the DOE Wind Program announced its largest investment in offshore wind to date in the spring of 2012 when it opened a funding opportunity announcement for advanced technology demonstration projects for offshore wind. The projects selected will receive up to $180 million dollars in total over the next five to seven years (pending congressional appropriations) to deploy next-generation technology designs. This will include a "fast-track" project, which will aim to reduce permitting, approval, environmental and other uncertainties often associated with the high capital costs for financing offshore wind projects; as well as five additional projects that will focus on bringing innovative technologies to market, including those offshore wind technologies specific to transitional and/or higher water depths that present a unique technical challenge in U.S. waters.

By making these strategic investments in offshore wind that are in line with the National Offshore Wind Strategy, DOE's Wind Program is ensuring that the United States moves towards the responsible, cost-effective, and innovative development and deployment of offshore wind power.