The US Department of Energy has designated the Center for Ocean Energy Technology (COET) at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), as the national center for ocean energy R&D. The Southeast National Marine Renewable Energy Center (SNMREC) is now the third such research center, joining the existing two in the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii. DoE will provide funding for SNMREC operations involving research and development of advanced technologies for harnessing the energy from the ocean. These include ocean current and ocean thermal energy, among others. FAU has a very good location for research and testing these technologies, being near Florida Straits and the Gulf Stream, much like the European Marine Energy Center (EMEC) is located in Orkney, next to prime marine energy locations, on the northern coast of Scotland.

SNMREC will collaborate with industrial partners in order to refine, investigate, produce and test next generation ocean power technologies. Initial work by the center will be the deployment of ocean current observation systems, with the goal to establish a reasearch baseline. At some point, SNMREC will be doing full-scale testing of prototypes.

[source: Florida Atlantic University]