Vineyard Wind Announces Challenge Participants

Greentown Labs, Somerville, MA, the largest climate technology startup incubator in North America, and Vineyard Wind, developer of the first utility-scale offshore wind energy generation facility in the U.S., recently announced the three startups selected for its Offshore Wind Challenge. Based at Greentown Labs, the Offshore Wind Challenge is a six-month accelerator program focused on providing entrepreneurs with the connections, business and technical resources they need to commercialize their technologies.The startups will focus on innovations in marine mammal monitoring through data collection, real-time transmission, and analysis. The advancement of their technologies will support the responsible development of the offshore wind industry off the coast ofMassachusetts, and well beyond.

The organizations' challenge, with support from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC), received more than 60 applications from around the globe. The challengers chosen to participate are:

• SICdrone, based in Massachusetts, builds offshore-capable aerial drone systems that can fly in harsh weather conditions, eliminating weather delays for critical inspection and monitoring at sea. 
• Night Vision Technology Solutions, based in Rhode Island, is a high-technology provider of thermal and visible camera systems designed for offshore wind, search and rescue, threat detection, and situational awareness.
• Open Ocean Robotics, based in British Columbia, makes it cheaper, easier, and safer to understand our oceans using solar-powered, self-driving boats that travel oceans for months at a time while collecting ocean data.

Additionally, the challenge draws on expertise from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the New England Aquarium. 

For more information on the challenge and the organizations supporting it, read the original press release.