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| Blue Water Technology Program |
 Integrated Power System (All Electric Ship)
The Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC) is collaborating with the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division (NAVSEA-Carderock), a 3,000-person Naval research organization, to take existing Navy-developed technology and apply it to the needs of the offshore and maritime industry. The form of this industry-led initiative is the Blue Water Technology Consortium. Consortium sponsors are comprised of companies in the offshore and maritime industry, many of which are based in the Gulf Coast region in cities such as New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Morgan City, Lafayette, Houston, Galveston, and Corpus Christi.
Activities take place in three stages:
- The first stage is a technology review of the NAVSEA-Carderock technologies in order to define technologies, expertise and intellectual properties that match needs of the offshore industry.
- Participants then join with HARC and NAVSEA-Carderock in designing technology transfer plans, demonstration projects, and mapping industry needs with NAVSEA-Carderock technologies and capabilities.
- Finally, sponsors enter into technology transfer agreements around individual technologies. Prototyping and demonstrating utilize the combined staffs and facilities of HARC, NAVSEA-Carderock, and sponsors.
 Gas Turbine Facility
Sponsors have access to an enhanced catalog of NAVSEA-Carderock technologies. This catalog helps to identify potential project areas of importance. In addition, sponsors have access to NAVSEA-Carderock technical expertise. The catalog is an evergreen document that is regularly revised and updated. Sponsors also have access to project summaries of the various projects that they are involved in.
Benefits of the Blue Water Technology Program
 Auxiliary Systems
- Transfers technology developed in Navy laboratories to support the US offshore and maritime industry, in keeping with NAVSEA-Carderock's Congressional charter
- Strengthens the Navy by helping to sustain NAVSEA-Carderock's core equities in research, engineering and marine sciences.
- Maintains dominance of US offshore service industry by advancing new technologies
- Shortens the time to develop offshore oil and gas reserves, benefiting the domestic petroleum industry and Federal and State governments
- Enhances the petroleum engineering and manufacturing technology capabilities within universities along the Gulf Coast, and trains the next generation of students for entry into the oil and gas industry
- Reduces risk and cost to the industry by taking advantage of mature technologies developed by Navy with taxpayers' support
- Strengthens and sustains national energy security, domestic supply and infrastructure stability
- Improves safety performance and environmentally-sustainable development
The Program has been endorsed by:
Catalog Development Underway
To assist industry in the determination of the appropriateness of Navy technology to their business, a technology catalog is being developed. The Department of Energy funded an initial project to establish a preliminary catalog of a selection of accessible Navy-developed technologies that have value to the Gulf of Mexico offshore and supporting maritime operations. In addition, a workshop was held with industry to solicit comments and recommendations concerning the expansion of the catalog and to lay the ground work for establishing joint industry projects.
A preliminary technology assessment index was developed based on a similar approach employed by NASA. The innovative process by which a technology is developed can be qualitatively described by monitoring the major milestones achieved from concept formulation to widespread application. As defined by NASA for application in the aerospace community, the milestones have been characterized into a metric known as the Technology Readiness Level (TRL). TRLs are a systematic metric/measurement system that supports assessments of the maturity of a particular technology and the consistent comparison of maturity between different types of technology. The catalog employs a TRL methodology suitable for the offshore and maritime industry. The TRL's are defined in this document ( 112 KB).
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| Page Updated/Reviewed: 05/25/2006 2:33 PM |
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