Re DoE EERE FOA 1081 [Initially written for another thread.] At...

Re DoE EERE FOA 1081

[Initially written for another thread.]
At the Sydney Roadshow in March which you attended, Bonus, you might remember that a question was asked as to what kind of active interest does the US Navy continue to show in the progress of CETO wave technology?

MO’s response was about as positive on the US Navy’s interest as he could possibly say without breaching any announcement rules. He almost fell over himself to stress the fact that the US Navy sent their second in command to inspect the Fremantle facility. The Americans couldn’t be more serious. I wondered at the time what exactly their specific interest might have been. The visit could also have had the additional purpose to determine the future development program for CETO 5 /6 so that the selection criteria for the MHK Funding Opportunity Announcement could be written to include the specifications of the CWE WEC. (This can never be said publically of course.) At least they certainly didn’t want CWE to be excluded.

I had forgotten about the US FOA but on the re read of the application reference posted by Acees I can’t help but find that it matches CWE’s project perfectly in every detail. It is customary for the US government (the Navy in this case) to want to keep some strings attached to it by its involvement. The CETO 6 design might even have been intentionally delayed to allow the Navy some suggested input (colour, perhaps!). CWE has already contributed the required minimum funds of 20% and 50% for the two stages of the test sequence.

One of the listed do’s is a very practical, “Make sure you hit the submit button”. Did CWE do this? They would have been silly not to do so. Yes, it would cost money to build an extra two CETO 6’s, but the key value is in getting the future commercial contracts from the Navy. I believe that CWE would only have had to do a cut and paste job of previous grant proposals for it to be short listed with the Navy.

“EERE anticipates making awards by end of September 2014”. That can easily spill over into first week of Oct of course.

Acees, I hope you are keeping your ear to the ground on the matter of outcomes.

A most interesting FAQ and answer list for this specific FOA 1081 appears here:

https://eere-exchange.energy.gov/FAQ.aspx?FoaId=ff20cef6-dab4-4acb-a299-b5d0fb617d6c

There is obvious serious interest shown by many parties.

Of the 26 questions and answers listed (from all sources) which ones might have come from CWE? (Various may apply, e.g. Q.17 re page limit.)

Taffy, The carrot is not the initial $5M but the stamp of approval and the ensuing $Billions in contracts from Navy style installations around the world. Remember their outlook: if it hasn’t passed inspection through their institutions it is not worth considering.

Juke