TotalEnergies enters subsea wave power partnership

Offshore staff

EDINBURGH, UK — TotalEnergies has joined the Renewables for Subsea Power (RSP) collaboration, a project currently staging wave power tests 5 km offshore eastern Orkney, northern Scotland.

The demonstrator initiative has connected the Blue X wave energy converter, built by Mocean Energy, with a Halo underwater battery storage system developed by Verlume.

The aim is to demonstrate that reliable, low-carbon power and communications can be used for subsea equipment in place of costlier umbilical cables.

TotalEnergies, with support from its Ocean Energy R&D team in Pau, southwest France, will join the other partners Baker Hughes, Serica Energy, Harbour Energy, Transmark Subsea, PTTEP and the Net Zero Technology Centre.

The company will gain access to all data and results from the extended test program at the Orkney site, and it also will have the opportunity to offer input to test plans and to gain a feasibility assessment of the use of RSP technology at a location of its choice. 

The Orkney deployment is the third phase of the RSP project. Phase 2, launched in 2021, involved integration of the main technologies for testing onshore at Verlume’s facility in Aberdeen.

Also that year, Mocean Energy’s Blue X prototype underwent sea trials at the European Marine Energy Centre’s Scapa Flow test site in Orkney where it generated first power.

Verlume’s seabed battery energy storage system is designed to provide an uninterrupted power supply in harsh offshore conditions. Its intelligent energy management system, Axonn, is designed to autonomously maximize available battery capacity in real time.

Earlier this month, TotalEnergies also joined CorPower Ocean’s Pilot Access Program to evaluate the Wave Energy Converter (WEC) technology as one of its solutions for decarbonization.

12.11.2023