A coalition of energy companies has invested £1.6m into a programme to develop a wave-powered renewable energy system for subsea projects.
Marine energy company Mocean Energy has teamed up with energy storage developer EC-OG alongside Chrysaor, Modus, OGTC and Baker Hughes to fund the demonstration of the system. Their aim is to cost-effectively lower the carbon footprint of providing power to subsea equipment.
“The decarbonisation of oil and gas operations is essential for the energy transition,” said Cameron McNatt, Mocean Energy’s managing director. “Our technology uses renewable energy from waves to deliver low carbon power for subsea equipment, including tiebacks and future fleets of autonomous underwater vehicles AUV’s].”
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Due to be tested onshore in July and August 2021 with ambitions to test at sea later in the year, the initiative follows an earlier study in 2020, part-funded by OGTC and undertaken by the partners.
Paul Slorach, business development director at EC-OG explained that the company’s Halo smart subsea battery technology has been developed for managing the intermittency of renewable power generation, to reliably integrate renewable energy systems to high value subsea assets.
The team believes there is potential for the system to be used in a number of subsea applications, including remediation of faulty umbilical cables in existing developments, as fast-track solutions for single well tiebacks, and as an enabler for ultra-long step out distances greater than 200km.
“This project will demonstrate the capability to provide temporary or semi-permanent modular series residency for hybrid autonomous vehicles (HAUV), recharged subsea and controlled from shore using ‘over-the-horizon’ technology,” said Nigel Ward, managing director at Modus. He added that the ‘innovative and flexible’ approach could reduce numbers of personnel required offshore, resulting in cost savings without compromised quality.
John Kerr, subsea production systems and technology director for Baker Hughes, Oilfield Equipment said: “Many subsea oilfield production systems will transition to all electric operations in the not too distant future, which will increase operational performance while simultaneously lowering the carbon footprint of the solution.”
I love the optimism of repeating the same mistake & expecting a different outcome.
Over the years we’ve seen many attempts (costing £100s of millions ) at wave-powered renewable energy, ALL doomed to fail because you can’t fight nature.
Waves are generated by wind therefore intermittent. Waves in the same area can range between 0.5m – 12m, any machine that’s light enough to generate in a 1m swell will be ripped apart by 12m waves & anything capable of withstanding 12m waves won’t produce much in a 1m wave
Here’s a few of the better ideas – Salter’s Ducks, Pelamis, greenWAVE, Wave Swell, Azura , Limpet, Calwave, M3wave … check how many are producing power to the grid … or even exist.
Wave goodbye to some more cash !
Completely agree with saveenergy’s comment. I have watched EU money then Cornwall Council money spent on Wave Hub, an unused 33kV plug sat in 50m depth of water off the Cornish Coastline. Probably around £50m and counting.
There is a case for small modular wave energy devices on islands (or artificial islands such as an oil rig) but they will all need generator power back up. It’s not going to make financial sense, but is an investment as part of a carbon reduction policy. The O&G industry understands the costs of build anything in a marine environment that has to last 25years.
It seems that tidal energy is the only predictable natural energy source: the moon is reliable at least. So, I agree with saveenergy that this another move to spend my taxes on a doomed project. We desperately need to upgrade the UKs reliable sources of energy as they have been sacrificed for the unreliables and in few years when we have another windless week: rolling power cuts will become the norm. We will certainly only have low energy industries very soon due to our totally uneconomical power prices.
Here’s another reason why wave energy will never work – you have to put the devices where the waves are high. High waves make it very difficult to get on board to maintain the things – look at Pelamis broken for months in the Bay of Biscay because no-one could safely get on board. At least with tidal energy there is no problem in transferring even in a fast current of say 4m/s. But the Government will not support tidal energy – they say they have enough wind energy to meet their carbon reduction targets!