The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has issued a request for proposals (RFP) under the Competitiveness Improvement Project (CIP) to support the development of small- and medium-sized wind turbine technology.
The 2025 RFP includes significant program changes aimed at streamlining the process of innovative design development, optimization, testing, and certification to expand access to distributed wind turbine technology.
In January 2025, NREL issued the 2025 Competitiveness Improvement Project funding solicitation, which is designed to support wind energy technology manufacturers like EWT Americas. Project funding is helping EWT commercialize its 1-megawatt turbine, shown here in a wastewater treatment facility in the U.K., across agricultural, commercial, and industrial segments, including dairy processors and biogas and water treatment facilities. Photo from EWT Americas
Managed by NREL on behalf of DOE’s Wind Energy Technologies Office, CIP awards cost-shared subcontracts and national laboratory technical support to U.S. component suppliers and manufacturers of small- and medium-sized wind turbines.
Advancing these wind energy systems to commercialization is technically challenging and resource-intensive for small businesses, which often lack the capacity to develop, certify, and commercialize their technologies on their own.
“Certification and testing costs are often prohibitive for manufacturers our size,” said Chris Connor, principal engineer of NPS Solutions, which received CIP awards in 2022 and 2024 to pursue certification of its 100-kilowatt wind turbine and inverter. “The technical and financial support available through DOE’s Competitiveness Improvement Project is vital for smaller distributed wind manufacturers, like us, to ensure the safety, quality, and performance of our products.”
Learn more on the CIP webpage or the RFP webpage on sam.org.
RFP submissions are due by 2 p.m. MT on March 28, 2025.
Responsive to Market Needs, Industry Feedback, and Rising Costs
The CIP 2025 RFP considers the current needs of the U.S. distributed wind energy market by prioritizing award topics that:
- Support distributed wind energy technology development and innovation to improve reliability, increase performance, and drive down installed costs
- Address the need for inverters built specifically for distributed wind turbines that have achieved listing to national safety and interconnection standards and that are capable of supporting grid operations
- Develop advanced manufacturing processes to reduce hardware costs and meet growing demand
- Ensure that distributed energy consumers have wind energy technology options that are certified for performance and quality
- Commercialize certified distributed wind technology.
“CIP has helped small businesses across the United States develop new and innovative distributed wind energy technology, increasing public access to a wide range of small- and medium-scale wind turbine designs tested and certified to national performance and safety standards,” said Brent Summerville, NREL CIP lead. “In addition, CIP projects have helped make distributed wind energy technology more cost-competitive and improved its interoperability with other distributed energy resources.”
In response to industry input, NREL will incorporate optional concept papers into the 2025 RFP, providing applicants the opportunity to present their project ideas and receive feedback from NREL CIP staff prior to submitting full proposals.
Further, to help optimize the technology development process, a 2025 applicant will be able to propose follow-on efforts in one phased multi-topic-area proposal that can include up to three topic areas. For example, an applicant may propose a Phase 1 effort to manufacture a prototype under the Prototype Manufacture topic area, followed by a second phase falling within the Prototype Installation and Testing topic area, and then a Phase 3 effort within the Small Turbine Certification and/or Listing topic area.
Successful awardees will complete their Phase 1 activities followed by a go/no-go stage during which the decision to advance to the next phase will be evaluated based on Phase 1 performance. If a “go” decision is made, Phase 2 efforts will be renegotiated.
Finally, maximum award amounts have been increased for five of the ten 2025 topic areas to offset the rising costs of turbine manufacturing, testing, and inverter listing and to accommodate high costs associated with medium-scale wind turbine development.
NREL will host a brief webinar on Friday, Jan. 17, 2025, to provide an overview of CIP changes in 2025. Register here for the webinar.
Proposals Must Align With Topic Areas
The 2025 CIP RFP invites proposals that focus on the following 10 topic areas:
- Prototype Manufacture for projects supporting the manufacturing of a full-scale prototype wind turbine system that is ready for prototype testing
- Prototype Design Development for projects moving original concepts from the preliminary design phase to a final prototype wind turbine design ready for manufacturing and testing
- Prototype Installation and Testing for projects validating prototype wind turbines to determine their commercial readiness
- Component Innovation for projects supporting innovation in existing components—such as controllers, inverters, alternators, rotor blades, or towers—to lower costs
- System Optimization for projects supporting improvements in existing wind turbine designs to optimize the full system or a subsystem of components, leading to a reduced levelized cost of energy
- Small Turbine Certification and/or Listing for projects helping small (150 kilowatts or less) wind turbines achieve certification and turbine assembly or components achieve listing to applicable electrical safety standards
- Type Certification and Listing for projects helping turbines up to 1 megawatt seek type certification and turbine assembly or components achieve listing to applicable electrical safety standards
- Inverter Listing for projects addressing the need for inverters that are built specifically for wind turbines up to 1 megawatt and to achieve listing to national electrical safety standards
- Manufacturing Process Innovation for projects supporting designing, implementing, and validating improved manufacturing processes for wind turbine production to reduce costs and meet growing demand
- Technology Commercialization for projects addressing risks to commercialization of distributed wind technology and the development of tools, business models, and partnerships for large-scale development.
The 2025 CIP RFP includes cost-share requirements, and proposals must provide evidence of technical readiness, incorporation in the United States, strong team skills and capabilities, and project budget justification. Work funded under this effort is expected to take place in the United States and/or U.S. territories unless otherwise justified.
“CIP has been instrumental in advancing wind energy as a low-cost distributed generation technology option,” Summerville said. “Improvements in CIP 2025 are aimed at making the program even more impactful and supportive for the growing distributed wind energy industry.”
To view the CIP RFP and read more information about CIP, including examples of past awards and information presented in a December 2024 webinar, visit the CIP project website. Learn more about NREL’s distributed wind energy research, and subscribe to NREL’s wind energy newsletter for more news like this.
