Subsea technology gets part of $3.4 million US govt offshore wind funding

The U.S. National Offshore Wind Research and Development Consortium (NOWRDC) has selected Dive Technologies to receive a share of $3.4 million funding for its autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) technology.

The Massachusetts-headquartered company said it will use the support to bring its next-generation AUV technology forward and improve subsea infrastructure monitoring for the offshore wind industry. 

NOWRDC, established with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), also selected five other projects to receive a share of $3.4 million for supply chain efficiency, asset monitoring, and inspection.

The selections include three new supply chain projects to facilitate U.S. manufacturing, ensure quality component production, and simplify transportation of major wind plant components; and two asset monitoring and inspection projects to reduce operational costs for offshore wind farms.

GE Research was selected for an autonomous vessel-based multi-sensing system for inspection and monitoring, University of Massachusetts – Lowell for a novel structural health monitoring system for turbines, Electric Power Research Institute for verifying blade integrity during manufacture, GE Renewable Energy for weld assembly of large castings, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory for the standardized scalable mooring solutions optimized for the U.S. supply chain.

“NOWRDC funding enables companies like Dive Technologies to innovate and rapidly scale-supporting local economies, strengthening domestic supply chains, and creating new jobs in advanced manufacturing, data collection, and analysis,” said Sam Russo, chief operating officer of Dive Technologies.

“This award will allow Dive to deploy our robotic systems to demonstrate all-weather, long-endurance, and fully autonomous seafloor asset health monitoring. This next-generation technology is poised to deliver safer and more cost-efficient seafloor and infrastructure data collection, advancing the nation’s offshore wind goals.”

Once contracted, the six new projects bring the NOWRDC’s total funding portfolio to $31 million for 46 projects.