The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has designated the Center for Ocean Energy Technology (COET) at Florida Atlantic University as a national center for ocean energy research and development.
The new Southeast National Marine Renewable Energy Center (SNMREC) at FAU joins centers in the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii that also work to advance the operational readiness of ocean energy technologies.
DOE will fund the SNMREC to undertake research and development of technologies capable of generating renewable energy from ocean currents and ocean thermal energy.
DOE said FAU is ideally located to oversee the development of technologies that can generate sustainable, cost-competitive electricity from the ocean energy resources in the Florida Straits and the Gulf Stream.
The SNMREC will collaborate with industry partners to investigate, refine, fabricate and test promising next-generation water-power technologies. The Center’s researchers have already begun this work by deploying ocean current observation systems, establishing research on environmental baselines to determine the level of potential effects, and initiating the fabrication of support structures for ocean energy devices.
The Center will ultimately perform full-scale field testing of prototype devices, an important step toward the successful development of innovative new ocean energy systems. As a public institution of higher education, FAU will also promote public awareness of ocean energy research and development, and develop curricula for the education of a workforce for the new industry.
The Center for Ocean Energy Technology (COET) at Florida Atlantic University was founded with a $5M award from the state of Florida in January 2007.
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