Past Funding Opportunity: I AM Hydro Prize (Fiscal Year 2021)

Announcement

• DOE Selects Grand Prize Winners of the Fish Protection Prize and Announces Deadlines for Two Additional Hydropower Prizes
• Website: I Am Hydro Prize

Selection Date

• 12/18/2020

Prize Objective

The Innovations in Advanced Manufacturing for Hydropower (I AM Hydro Prize) was designed to:

• Catalyze the use of advanced manufacturing to drive down levelized costs of hydropower by seeking solutions that can dramatically lower initial capital costs and/or increase annual energy production
• Inform the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) future investments by identifying targeted, high-impact opportunities to apply advances in manufacturing to address hydropower’s critical challenges, which may be used to inform future funding opportunities
• Bring new innovators into the hydropower sector and help form partnerships and collaborations between industry, academia, and government to accelerate innovative advanced manufacturing technologies for hydropower.

Description

WPTO launched the I AM Hydro Prize to lower the costs of hydropower components and systems designs by leveraging advancements in manufacturing and material. I AM Hydro innovators competed for up to $175,000 in cash prizes and helped support the hydropower industry using the ingenuity of advanced manufacturing.

The prize was designed to spur innovation by engaging a national community of visionaries who are not typically associated with the hydropower industry and target levelized cost of energy reductions in hydropower design, manufacturing, and operation and maintenance.

EERE Selections

• Hydropower Manufacturing Prize Winners Conceive Strategies To Lower Costs and Improve Performance of Hydropower Components

Funding Awardees

• Grand prize: 
  • Cadens, LLC, Utility of Large Area AM for Small Hydro.
• Innovator prizes: 
  • Skuld LLC, Additive Manufacturing Evaporative Casing 
  • AI-Driven Design Optimization of Turbines
  • Interphase Materials, Anti-Fouling Coating for Hydropower Cost Reduction
  • Fusion-Free Fabrication, Augmented Repair via Additive Manufacturing
  • Composite Magnet for Hydropower Generators 
  • Ceramic Rust Universal Sealant Technology
  • Multiscale Systems, Lowering Costs with Mechanical Metamaterials 
  • RCAM Technologies, Retrofitting of Non-Powered Dams Using 3-D Concrete Printing 
  • Mazdak International Inc, Semi-Solid Casting for Hydro-Turbines 
  • Super-frictionless Surfaces Quasi-R.