Modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Energy Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) funds game-changing energy technologies that are typically too early for private-sector investment.
From new wind turbine designs and transportation fuels made from bacteria to innovative energy storage solutions and smaller, more efficient semiconductors, ARPA-E projects have the potential to change the way we generate, store and use energy. The program continues to invest in technologies that could radically improve U.S. economic prosperity, national security and environmental well-being.
Photo Gallery: 2017 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit
ARPA-E’s OPEN 2012 program awardee Brown University and partner BluSource Energy took a novel approach to converting the steady, reliable flow of rising and falling tides into electricity. Instead of a traditional rotary-type turbine, the Leading Edge technology harvests the energy of the sea using an “oscillating hydrofoil.”
Photo courtesy of Photo courtesy of ARPA-E.
The ARPA-E University of Maryland team's RoCo, one of the world’s first personal air conditioning systems. Developed as part of the DELTA program, this portable system uses a “smart” nozzle to track users’ movements and direct cool or warm air where needed.
Photo courtesy of Photo courtesy of ARPA-E.
Each year at the Summit, ARPA-E Program Directors and Fellows give a “Fast Pitch” - a rapid-paced succession of exciting current program concepts as well as some completely new, “outside-the-box” ideas. Here, ARPA-E Fellow Dr. Addison Killean Stark delivers his fast pitch on “High-Temperature Waste Heat Utilization: Towards Flame-Temperature Topping Cycles.”
Photo courtesy of Photo courtesy of ARPA-E.
The ARPA-E University of Maryland project team exhibits their technology at the 2017 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit.
Photo courtesy of Photo courtesy of ARPA-E.
The Women in Energy event at the 2017 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit brought together entrepreneurs, researchers, policymakers, investors, and others to celebrate the achievements of women in energy, discuss ways to better engage and provide opportunities for women in energy technology development and deployment, and provide networking opportunities.
Photo courtesy of Photo courtesy of ARPA-E.
ARPA-E’s TERRA project teams are working on new tools to cultivate improved varieties of energy sorghum, an important biofuel crop. Awardees Purdue University and IBM demoed PhenoRover -- a semi-automated, mobile sensor platform -- at the 2017 ARPA-E Summit. This high-tech tractor has an impressive array of onboard sensing equipment that lets it quickly scan and sample entire fields of sorghum in search of the very best plants for breeding next-generation biofuel crops.
Photo courtesy of Photo courtesy of ARPA-E.