An overview of green offshore electric energy systems: Types, advances, potential challenges, and solutions

The increasing exploitation of offshore renewable energies promotes the development of offshore electric energy systems throughout the world, which is recognized as a pivotal component in green transition of electric energy systems. This article provides a comprehensive overview about the current development of offshore electric energy systems. The main objectives of this review are to investigate the latest progress in the development of offshore electric energy systems: (1) The latest progress of offshore wind power industry is first investigated, including floating offshore wind turbine technology and offshore wind-to-hydrogen technology; (2) offshore renewable microgrid technology is analyzed, where the critical technical challenges in optimal scheduling, energy management, and economic operation are analyzed; (3) the emerging technologies for offshore agriculture energy system considering multiple-energy resources are discussed, including energy efficiency, and economic benefit, etc.; (4) offshore petroleum-electricity energy technologies with integration of renewable energy resources is reviewed; and (5) current policies and regulations for offshore electric energy systems are reviewed and analyzed. While significant progress has been made in the development of offshore renewable energy systems, there remain critical challenges related to system integration, energy management, and economic feasibility. Finally, the research trends are discussed.