SHARKS | DE FOA 0002334

Opportunity Information: Apply for DE FOA 0002334

The SHARKS (Submarine Hydrokinetic and Riverine Kilo-Megawatt Systems) opportunity is a Department of Energy ARPA-E funding program aimed at pushing tidal and river-current power technology to a much lower cost and higher performance level than what is available today. ARPA-E, created under the America COMPETES Acts, focuses on high-risk, high-reward applied research and development that is still too early for typical private investment, with an emphasis on technologies that could become genuinely disruptive and create new cost and performance "learning curves" rather than just incremental improvements. In practical terms, SHARKS is about rethinking hydrokinetic turbines (devices that generate electricity from moving water without dams) so they become economically attractive for real deployment, including near population centers, in remote microgrids, and in broader "blue economy" applications.

Technically, SHARKS targets new hydrokinetic turbine (HKT) designs for both tidal and riverine environments, leveraging the strengths of these resources: they are renewable, highly predictable, and often located close to where electricity is needed. The program highlights the potential for devices with low visual impact and potentially minimal environmental footprint compared with many other forms of generation. Rather than funding isolated component improvements, SHARKS stresses integrated, multidisciplinary design from the very beginning, because the hardest problems in hydrokinetic systems are tightly coupled: hydrodynamics affects structural loads, which affects materials and maintenance needs, which affects drivetrain and generator sizing, which affects controls, which affects energy capture and survivability, and so on.

A defining feature of SHARKS is its emphasis on modern system-level design frameworks: Control Co-Design (CCD), Co-Design (CD), and Designing-for-OpEx (DFO). The central idea is that controls, mechanical design, electrical conversion, and operational/maintenance strategy should be designed together, not sequentially. ARPA-E is signaling that competitive projects will treat the turbine and its control system as a unified machine, account for how design choices influence operating expenditure over the full life of the device, and use modeling and simulation alongside experimental validation to converge on designs that are not only efficient but also practical to operate and maintain in harsh water environments.

From a performance and cost standpoint, SHARKS proposes an explicit optimization "metric space" that balances two core measures: (1) swept rotor area per unit of equivalent system mass (a proxy for how much energy-capturing capability you get for the mass you must build, deploy, and support), and (2) water-to-electron efficiency (how effectively the device converts the kinetic energy of moving water into delivered electrical power). Teams are expected to navigate these design tradeoffs with the goal of moving across levelized cost of energy (LCOE) contours toward substantially lower LCOE. The program goal is a major LCOE reduction on the order of 60% relative to the state of the art referenced in the FOA, achieved not through a single breakthrough but through a combination of better energy capture, larger effective rotor area for a given mass, lower operations and maintenance costs, and reduced potential negative environmental interactions.

In scope, ARPA-E indicates interest in complete and credible turbine concepts and enabling subsystems, including (but not limited to) hydrodynamic design, structural and mechanical architecture, materials, coupled hydro-structural behavior, electrical energy conversion, controls, numerical simulation tools, and experimental work. A key expectation is that projects will do physical testing in water of critical systems and subsystems to validate the assumptions behind the design, not just paper studies. This reflects ARPA-E's applied R&D focus: the work should produce evidence that the concept can function in realistic conditions and that the pathway to lower cost and scalable deployment is believable.

On the administrative side, the opportunity is issued as DOE FOA DE-FOA-0002334 under ARPA-E authority, with awards made as grants and/or cooperative agreements. The total program anticipated around 12 awards, with an award ceiling of $10,000,000 per project. Eligibility is broadly "unrestricted," meaning applications can come from many entity types (subject to any additional FOA-specific eligibility clarifications). Applications had to be submitted through ARPA-E eXCHANGE (not by email or other portals), and the original posting listed a concept paper due date of May 27, 2020. The solicitation also reiterates ARPA-E's role in applied research and experimental development (as opposed to basic research), while pointing applicants to other DOE offices and user facilities when a project is better aligned with fundamental science or more incremental technology roadmaps.

• The Department of Energy, Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "SHARKS" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 81.135.
• This funding opportunity was created on Apr 09, 2020.
• Applicants must submit their applications by May 27, 2020 Concept Papers are due no later than May 27, 2020. Applicants are strongly encouraged to apply 48 hours in advance of the due date.. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $10,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 12 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

Apply for DE FOA 0002334

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