Renewable Local Power to Decarbonise Offshore Energy

Abstract Momentum is building within the global offshore oil and gas industry to reduce carbon emissions in line with net zero targets and industry agreements around decarbonization such as the North Sea Transition Deal in the UK. As part of this drive to reduce emissions and to decrease reliance on traditional sources of power, integration of renewables within offshore operations is increasingly being seen as a viable solution. In order to encourage wider adoption of renewables within these operations, successful projects must be demonstrated to show the viability of renewables in this environment, as well as the capability of overcoming the intermittency challenges associated with renewables. The Renewables for Subsea Power (RSP) project, launched in 2020, is said to be a first-of-a-kind commercial scale demonstrator project which provides a fully integrated offshore power and over-the-horizon communications solution through the integration of a wave energy device and a subsea battery energy storage system. The project demonstrates power export to the subsea energy management system, powering both subsea controls equipment and underwater vehicles through a remote wireless communication link to the subsea equipment. In this paper, the focus will be on the development and progress within the RSP project. Discussion will include observations from Phase 2 onshore commissioning, as well as the offshore demonstration which began in February 2023 in the UK North Sea and has been operational over a nine-month period. Beyond innovation in the developed hardware, the project provides a case study of a wider industry collaborative approach, addressing the need to explore ways of achieving a net zero future and work towards enhanced energy security, including for offshore operations. The project is relevant to numerous remote power provision applications across the ever-growing Blue Economy.