SOV Offshore Charging System

During the Operations and Maintenance (O&M) phase of an offshore wind farm's lifecycle (typically 25 years), wind farm operators rely on extensive marine logistics between shore and the wind farm for transport of technicians, inspectors, equipment and spare parts. A range of vessels is used in these operations, but all are currently powered mainly by MGO (some have small hybrid content) and in UK waters alone, they are currently responsible for an estimated total of 285,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions per annum.

Reducing and ultimately removing the use of fossil fuels in offshore activities is now a global priority. However, the shift to fully electric and meaningful hybrid electric power, for most vessels, is hampered by a lack of available infrastructure for recharging offshore, with shore power and shoreside charging facilities also limited or non-existent.

Due to current battery technology and range limitations, it is impractical to expect battery powered vessels to be able to travel to and from some of the UK's OWFs, and operate within them because they can be more than 60 km offshore. Diesel electric hybrid vessels do currently exist but as with the early days of hybrid electric cars their batteries are very small, allowing only some limited battery operation when leaving and approaching port or loitering in the field at low power. This does little to reduce CO2 emissions as the bulk of the emissions are generated when the vessel is operating at high power.

In order to meaningfully decarbonise marine operations, battery power (charged from a renewable energy source) or low/zero emissions fueled vessels is/are required. In order to enable battery powered vessels to be built and deployed, this project intends to design and develop an offshore charging system for Service Operation Vessels (SOVs) and carry out focused prototyping and testing of some of the novel components required in the system.

This will facilitate charging of SOVs, or indeed Platform Supply Vessels (PSVs) and other vessel types directly from WTGs or OSSs and other suitable offshore power generation structures to deliver reduced emissions and facilitate net zero O&M activities.

This project builds on a previous CMDC project that successfully developed and factory tested a solution for CTV charging, taking the lessons learned from that project, extensive industry engagement and interest and the clear demand from industry to offer a solution for SOV charging.