SolarDuck and MARIN win $3.6m for offshore floating power hub
A Dutch research grant backs the design of SolarDuck's Offshore Floating Power & Utility Hub, aimed at powering remote offshore and subsea assets.
Offshore floating solar company SolarDuck and the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN) have been awarded a $3.64m (EUR3.2m) subsidy from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) for the Steady Seas research program.
The project will advance the foundational design of SolarDuck's Offshore Floating Power & Utility Hub (OFPH), a single-platform offshore solar solution developed to provide reliable power, communications and other utilities to remote offshore and subsea assets. As offshore energy activity moves further from shore, the need for reliable in-field power is becoming increasingly important. Subsea oil and gas infrastructure, carbon capture and storage projects, offshore monitoring systems and other remote assets often depend on long subsea cables, umbilicals or local diesel generation, which can be costly, complex to install, vulnerable to damage and carbon intensive. The OFPH is designed to offer an alternative: a redeployable offshore platform that generates renewable power where it is needed, supporting continuous operations through integrated energy storage and auxiliary systems.
Steady Seas builds on the operational experience and data gathered through SolarDuck's Merganser project in the Dutch North Sea. Under the new program, SolarDuck will lead the overall OFPH design and system integration, while MARIN will contribute hydrodynamic analysis, simulations and basin testing to validate the platform's behaviour, reliability and wave response under realistic offshore conditions.
The program addresses key technical questions including hydrodynamic performance, mooring and motion behaviour, integration of power and communication systems and the interface with subsea infrastructure. Following completion of the research phase, SolarDuck intends to move towards demonstration in collaboration with industry partners, with Joint Industry Projects being established to test the hub in operational offshore conditions.
Photo: Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
