Renewables for Subsea Power – Successful Completion of Transformational Low Carbon Subsea Power Project

Abstract The Renewables for Subsea Power (RSP) project is a first-of-its-kind commercial-scale demonstrator project, presenting a novel way to provide fully autonomous offshore power generation from renewable energy, delivering a cost-effective and flexible alternative to power and communications from shore for operating subsea equipment. The project showcases how net zero can be enabled in an offshore environment through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions associated with power delivery to assets. RSP has completed a three-phase program to demonstrate the delivery of low-carbon power and communications to assets offshore. After competition of Phase 1 (a detailed front-end-engineering-design (FEED) study) in 2021, Phase 2 consisted of system communications bench testing, assembly of the subsea systems, and onshore commissioning of both the wave energy device and energy storage system. Phase 3 included integrated system deployment off the coast of Orkney in the UK North Sea, combining a wave energy converter and seabed energy storage system for local, reliable subsea power and communications delivery to a subsea electronics module and a residential underwater vehicle. This paper builds on the findings of SPE-216124 (Slorach et al., 2023) with particular focus in this paper given to the demonstration of power export to the subsea energy management system, which provides power to both subsea controls equipment and the underwater vehicle residency. This has been demonstrated through a remote wireless communication link to the subsea equipment. The conclusion of the at-sea trials has provided evidence of the benefits of directly integrating renewable power into subsea systems. The offshore trial has also provided invaluable lessons learned from over a year of at-sea operation, covering an extensive testing regime including all aspects of seasonal environmental impact on the equipment. These will lead to commercial deployments planned for 2024/5.