After TotalEnergies and PTTEP, Shell joins wave power for subsea equipment project

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

The £2 million demonstrator initiative, nearing 12 months in the water, has connected the Blue X wave energy converter built by Mocean Energy with Verlume’s Halo underwater battery storage system.

The fully operational project, located 5 kilometers east of 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.

“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 calibre of the industry partners that are involved,” said Andy Martin, Chief Commercial Officer at Verlume.

“It is great that Shell is now joining the project, a company that we have been working with for some time. I am looking forward to continuing our close working relationship.”

The new investment came in via the Shell Technology – Marine Renewable Program, a global R&D group pursuing the mission of finding, screening, testing, and developing marine renewable energy technologies to achieve more value with lower emissions and help build the critical energy infrastructure for the Blue Economy to grow and thrive.

Joining RSP offers Shell access to all data and results from the current test program, alongside 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. In 2021, the consortium invested £1.6 million into phase two of the program which saw the integration of the core technologies in an onshore test environment at Verlume’s operations facility in Aberdeen.

In 2021, Mocean Energy’s Blue X prototype underwent a program of at-sea testing at the European Marine Energy Centre’s (EMEC) Scapa Flow test site in Orkney, where it generated first power and gathered key data on machine performance and operation.

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) in the project.