SENSOR | DE FOA 0001737

Opportunity Information: Apply for DE FOA 0001737

The SENSOR (Saving Energy Nationwide in Structures with Occupancy Recognition) funding opportunity is a U.S. Department of Energy ARPA-E program aimed at cutting building energy use by making heating, cooling, and ventilation respond to actual occupancy instead of assumptions or simple motion triggers. The core goal is ambitious and specific: enable roughly 30 percent reductions in residential heating and cooling energy through sensor systems that can reliably determine whether a home is truly occupied, and roughly 30 percent reductions in commercial building energy through sensors that can accurately count the number of people within a defined HVAC zone so ventilation and temperature can be adjusted accordingly. The emphasis is on saving energy without sacrificing occupant comfort, by letting building systems automatically relax temperature and ventilation settings when spaces are empty or lightly occupied, then return to comfort conditions when people are present.

ARPA-E positions this program as applied R&D for high-risk, high-reward technologies that are still too early for typical private investment, but that could become disruptive if they hit demanding cost and performance targets. In practical terms, SENSOR is not about incremental upgrades to existing thermostats or building automation. It is about creating occupancy and people-counting sensing capabilities that are substantially more accurate, reliable, and affordable than what is commonly available, so they can be deployed at scale. ARPA-E highlights that many buildings already have downstream equipment (thermostats, controls, variable air volume systems, and related HVAC components) that could use better occupancy data with only minor modifications, meaning the real bottleneck is sensing: knowing when people are actually there, and how many.

The opportunity is organized around four technical focus areas. First are residential human-presence sensors that produce a simple, actionable signal (occupied vs. unoccupied) suitable for automatically triggering temperature setbacks and recoveries between comfort setpoints and energy-saving setpoints. A key detail is that the program wants sensors that recognize true human presence, not just motion, since common motion-based approaches can miss stationary occupants and lead to comfort complaints or user overrides that erase savings. Second are commercial people-counting sensors designed to estimate the number of occupants in a predefined zone; this enables not only temperature setbacks but also demand-controlled ventilation that better matches outside-air intake to real occupancy, which can be a major energy driver in many commercial settings. Third is a push for low-cost, stable, and easily deployable CO2 sensors, reflecting how widely CO2 is used as a proxy for occupancy and ventilation control, yet how cost, calibration drift, and deployment friction can limit adoption or performance. Fourth is real-world testing and validation, requiring technologies from the first three areas to be proven not just in the lab but also in controlled quasi-real environments and in actual field deployments over the course of the program, so performance claims hold up under real conditions like variable layouts, changing usage patterns, and operational constraints.

A recurring theme in the FOA description is adoption at scale: ARPA-E is looking for sensor solutions that can meet disruptively low price targets and low failure rates, because the savings only materialize nationwide if the technology is cheap and robust enough to be widely installed and maintained. The program also signals that applicants should explicitly identify adoption barriers (technical, practical, and deployment-related), lay out credible technical approaches to overcome them, and then validate those approaches with meaningful real-world data. Beyond HVAC savings, the FOA notes that reliable presence detection and occupant counting could unlock broader improvements in how buildings interact with occupants, implying potential spillover benefits in building automation, space utilization, and responsive controls.

Administratively, this opportunity was issued by DOE ARPA-E as Funding Opportunity Announcement DE-FOA-0001737, using a cooperative agreement funding instrument under CFDA 81.135, and it was described as open eligibility (unrestricted by entity type, subject to any clarifications in the full FOA). The posting lists an award ceiling of up to $10,000,000 per award and an expectation of around 15 awards. Submissions were to be handled through ARPA-E eXCHANGE, with concept papers required through that system rather than by other submission methods, and applicants were encouraged to submit concept papers at least 48 hours before the deadline. For full details, ARPA-E directed applicants to obtain the complete FOA package via the ARPA-E FOA website and to rely on the ARPA-E eXCHANGE user guide for submission instructions.

• The Department of Energy, Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "SENSOR" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 81.135.
• This funding opportunity was created on Jan 18, 2017.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Mar 17, 2017 Applicants are strongly encouraged to submit their Concept Papers at least 48 hours in advance of the submission due date.. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $10,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 15 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

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