Shell Joins Wave Power Project in Scotland

Shell has joined the Renewables for Subsea Power (RSP) collaborative project, which powers subsea equipment off the coast of Orkney, Scotland, through a combination of wave power and subsea energy storage.

The $2.51 million (GBP 2 million) project, nearly one year operational, connects Mocean Energy’s Blue X wave energy converter with a Halo underwater battery developed by Aberdeen intelligent energy management specialists at Verlume. The project, located 3.1 miles (5 kilometers) east of the Orkney Mainland, “aims to show how green 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 with long lead times to procure and install”, according to a news release Monday.

Shell made an investment in the project through the Shell Technology – Marine Renewable Program, a global research and development group focused on marine renewable energy technologies. The company will obtain access to all data and results from the current test program, as well as a feasibility assessment of the use of RSP technology at a location of their choice, the release said.

The Orkney deployment is the third phase of the RSP project. In 2021, the consortium invested $2 million (GBP 1.6 million) into the second phase of the program, which saw the successful integration of the core technologies in an onshore test environment at Verlume’s operations facility in Aberdeen.

“This new investment by Shell underscores the international interest in our pan-industry project and we look forward to working with them and exploring potential new applications for RSP’s combined technologies”, Mocean Energy Commercial Director Ian Crossland said.

“With the Renewables for Subsea Power project being operational now for 10 months, I am proud of what has been achieved both technically and commercially to date, alongside the caliber of the industry partners that are involved”, Verlume Chief Commercial Officer Andy Martin said. “It is great that Shell is now joining the project, a company that we have been working with for some time”.

Shell joins project leads Mocean Energy and Verlume, alongside industry players Baker Hughes, Serica Energy, Harbour Energy, Transmark Subsea, PTTEP, TotalEnergies and the Net Zero Technology Centre (NZTC).

“It’s fantastic to see the Renewables for Subsea Power project go from strength to strength, having supported the project since 2019”, Graeme Rogerson, Head of Net Zero Technology at NZTC, said. “Mocean Energy’s Blue X wave energy converter and Verlume’s Halo underwater battery storage system have demonstrated their effectiveness in delivering low carbon power and communication to offshore subsea infrastructure. Shell’s investment and the opportunity to continue to test in a real-world environment will help to further progress the technologies”.

According to the company website, Mocean has secured over $6.3 million (GBP 5 million) in funding support from the Scottish and UK governments and the European Union to develop technology that can harness wave energy, stating that “harnessing just one percent of our global wave power resource would power more than 50 million homes and save more than 50 million [metric tons] of [carbon dioxide] annually”. Its prototype model Blue X was deployed off the coast in 2021, and provides data for its two core technologies currently being developed, the Blue Star and the Blue Horizon wave energy converters.

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, according to the release.

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