The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is proposing to provide federal funding to Michelin North America, Inc. to design, develop, fabricate, and test new materials for power transmission belts for wave energy converters (WEC).
Office of NEPA Policy and Compliance
October 15, 2025
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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is proposing to provide federal funding to Michelin North America, Inc. to design, develop, fabricate, and test new materials for power transmission belts for wave energy converters (WEC).
Award activities would be performed at the following locations:
- Michelin Americas Research Center (Greenville, SC): optimization of materials through finite element analysis (FEA);
- Fenner Dunlop Americas, LLC (Lavona, GA and Coraopolis, PA): fabrication of the test belt, testing of small-scale belts and prototype belts, and production of rubber compounds needed for belt development;
- Fenner Dunlop, LLC (Port Clinton, OH): optimization, analysis, and testing of the protype belt design; and
- Sandia National Laboratory (Albuquerque, NM) or at CalWaves (Alameda, CA): prototype testing on their respective large-scale test rigs.