Orkney hosts £2m renewable energy subsea power project

Project will use wave power and subsea energy storage to power underwater drone and infrastructure

A project to power subsea equipment with wave power and underwater energy storage has taken to the seas in the north of Scotland.

The £2 million ($2.4m) initiative called Renewables for Subsea Power has connected a wave energy converter built by Edinburgh company Mocean Energy with an underwater battery developed by Aberdeen intelligent energy firm Verlume.

The two technologies have been deployed in the seas off Orkney and have now begun a minimum four-month test programme where they will provide low carbon power and communication to subsea controls equipment operated by energy firm Baker Hughes, and an underwater autonomous vehicle provided by Transmark Subsea.

Transmark managing director Nigel Money said the project was “a fantastic opportunity to further test our resident autonomous underwater drone in an open sea environment”, adding that at present the subsea drone currently operates in salmon farming nets, which is a more closed environment.

The European Marine Energy Centre has supplied instrumentation to measure the speed and direction of currents during the deployment, and Wave Energy Scotland has provided £160,000 to support the integration of the umbilical into the wave energy converter.

The project aims to show how clean energy technologies can be combined to provide reliable low carbon power and communications to subsea equipment, offering a cost-effective alternative to umbilical cables, which are carbon intensive and have long lead times to procure and install.

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The Orkney deployment is the third phase of the Renewables for Subsea Power project which is being supported by consortium partners, including Baker Hughes and UK energy companies Harbour Energy and Serica Energy.

Each phase of the programme has also been supported by grant funding from the Net Zero Technology Centre.

In 2021, the consortium invested £1.6 million into phase two of the programme, which saw the successful integration of the core technologies in an onshore commissioning test environment at Verlume’s operations facility in Aberdeen.

They are now testing the entire system at sea at a site 5km east of the Orkney mainland.

In 2021, Mocean Energy’s Blue X wave energy converter prototype underwent a programme of rigorous at-sea testing at the European Marine Energy Centre’s Scapa Flow test site in Orkney where they generated first power and gathered significant data on machine performance and operation.  

The Blue X programme was made possible through £3.3 million from Wave Energy Scotland which supported the development, construction and testing of the Blue X prototype at sea.

“This is a natural next step for our technology,” said Mocean Energy Managing Director Cameron McNatt.

“The new test site east off Deerness offers a much more vigorous wave climate and the opportunity to demonstrate the integration of a number of technologies in real sea conditions.”

Verlume’s seabed battery energy storage system, Halo, has been specifically designed for the harsh underwater environment, reducing operational emissions and facilitating the use of renewable energy by providing a reliable, uninterrupted power supply.

Read more:
Study finds ocean energy could save UK over £1bn in dispatch costs
Wave energy converter project planned for North Sea

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