Thai petroleum firm joins Scottish subsea storage and wave power project

Thailand’s state energy company, PTTEP, has joined Renewables for Subsea Power, a project which aims to prove the concept of powering subsea equipment with wave power and intelligent subsea energy storage.

The £2 million ($3 million) demonstrator, located off the coast of Orkney, Scotland, connects Mocean Energy's Blue X wave energy converter with a Halo underwater battery developed by energy management firm Verlume.

The seabed battery energy storage system, Halo, functions on an intelligent energy management system, Axonn, which autonomously maximises available battery capacity in real time, according to Verlume.

The project aims to provide a greener and more cost effective alternative to the carbon-intensive umbilical cables used to provide power and communications to subsea equipment.

National petroleum exploration and production company PTTEP has joined the Renewables for Subsea Power project as part of the company's efforts to explore renewable energy to support the energy transition.

PTTEP will collaborate with a consortium of Mocean Energy, Verlume, Baker Hughes, Serica Energy, Harbour Energy, Transmark Subsea, and the Net Zero Technology Centre, and will gain access to the data generated by the demonstrator.

PTTEP will also provide input to test plans and will be provided with a feasibility assessment of the use of RSP technology at a location of their choice.

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Andy Martin, chief commercial officer at Verlume, said in a statement: “The Renewables for Subsea Power project is a solution which can help decarbonise operations in many locations across the world and the further expansion of the project consortium is a concrete example of international demand.

“We look forward to receiving PTTEP’s input and insights and to working closely with them alongside the consortium members to further explore our energy transition enabling technologies.”

According to Mhairi Begg, technology manager at NZTC, this inward investment shows the global potential of the technology and provides a good example of how global collaboration can foster and advance green technology deployment.

The Orkney deployment is the third phase of the Renewables for Subsea Power project.

In 2021, the consortium invested £1.6 million ($2.1 million) into phase two of the programme – which saw the successful integration of the core technologies in an onshore test environment at Verlume’s operations facility in Aberdeen.