Offshore

Startup accelerators target offshore wind innovation

Startup accelerators target offshore wind innovation
(Image by 3dmentat on 123rf)

The Offshore Wind Innovation Hub and Greentown Labs partnering with Vineyard Wind both announced they have selected startups for their accelerator programs, which are meant to prepare the participants for working with offshore wind companies, and to advance offshore wind tech development.

Both programs last six months, and provide mentorship, business development, networking, and other resources to the several startups that made it through the selection process.

Offshore Wind Innovation Hub

The Offshore Wind Innovation Hub chose six winners for its first round of the program, who will participate in a six-month mentoring and development program designed to prepare them for working with major offshore wind developers, suppliers, and the offshore wind value chain.

The startups, chosen from a list of 49 global applicants, are:

  • Benchmark Labs Inc. (San Diego, CA): Turbine-specific weather forecasts meant to improve operational margins.
  • Flucto (Bremen, Germany): – Using sensor, GPS, and camera data for offshore wind farm installations and increased precision.
  • Heerema Engineering Solutions (Delft, South Holland): Software tool to simulate the complete offshore construction process in an event simulator.
  • OSC AS (Ålesund, Norway): Industrial metaverse simulation for reducing risk and cutting costs in offshore wind farm planning.
  • RCAM Technologies (Los Angeles, CA): Low-cost, 3D printed, environmentally friendly concrete anchors for floating offshore wind.
  • VINCI VR (Boston, MA): Virtual reality for workforce safety and training.

The Offshore Wind Innovation Hub was launched in January 2023, and is led by Equinor and bp in collaboration with Urban Future Lab at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, and National Offshore Wind R&D Consortium. The New York City-based hub is supported by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC).

Equinor and bp have partnered to build three offshore wind farms in federal waters off the coast of New York State: Empire Wind 1 (816 MW), Empire Wind 2 (1,260 MW), and Beacon Wind 1 (1,230 MW). The global energy giants also plan to invest up to $250 million to build an offshore wind staging and assembly hub at a Brooklyn, New York port. 

Go Energize 2023

Greentown Labs, a climate tech incubator, and Vineyard Wind, an offshore wind farm developer, have partnered for the  Greentown Go Energize 2023 accelerator program, in which five startups will receive mentorship, networking, workshops, partnership-focused programming, as well as connections with offshore wind developers, NGOs, scientists, and others involved in offshore wind development.

With 40 GW of offshore wind capacity projected to become available over the next decade, the Go Energize 2023 accelerator aims to prepare a select group of startups to take advantage of that growth.

Five startups were selected for the accelerator:

  • Blue Atlas Robotics (Odense, Denmark): Blue Atlas Robotics has developed and commercialized a robot platform that is intended to reduce operational and data limitations present today when using available methods for underwater inspections.
  • FutureOn (Oslo, Norway): FutureOn’s FieldTwin creates a 3D geospatial common data environment across surface, subsea, and subsurface domains, with open API connectivity into third-party tools and existing customer workflows.
  • HyperKelp (Encinitas, CA): HyperKelp produces the Kelp Smart Buoy—a hosted payload platform capable of carrying hundreds of sensors—that collects and transmits marine-level data for wind farmers, climate scientists, and military intelligence officials.
  • Lobster Robotics (Delft, Netherlands): Lobster Robotics develops robots for visual surveying to lower the cost of surveying in offshore wind farms.
  • SeaDeep (Malden, MA): SeaDeep seeks to improve underwater assessments with AI-powered subsea vision for inspecting marine environments and substructures in real-time and with off-the-shelf cameras.

The program is supported by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC), and follows the 2020 Greentown Go accelerator, which focused on marine-mammal monitoring, real-time transmission, and analysis.

Vineyard Wind, a joint venture between Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Avangrid Renewables, is already under construction in Long Island Sound, 13 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. The project will utilize 62 General Electric Haliade-X turbines, each rated at 13 MW.

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