Investigation of the novel challenges of an integrated offshore multi-purpose platform

The Made in China 2025 report, highlights ocean renewable energy technologies as one of the 10 areas of opportunity for UK and Chinese companies. The "Outline of the National Marine Economic Development Plan" specifically targets the development of novel ocean farming methods, more productive but also more socially and environmentally compatible. In the EU, the "Blue Growth" program aims at sustainable growth in the marine and maritime sectors, already representing 5.4 million jobs and generating a gross added value of 500 billion euros a year.
Offshore structures are very costly. The main idea of a Multi-Purpose Platform (MPP), integrating (for example) renewable energy devices and aquaculture facilities, is to find the synergies to share manufacturing, installation, operation and maintenance, and decommissioning costs.
This has the potential to, save money, reduce the overall impact, and maximize the socio-economic benefits.

MPP development poses cross-disciplinary challenges, since they simultaneously aim to achieve several potentially conflicting objectives: to be techno-economically feasible, environmentally considered, socially beneficial, and compatible with maritime legislations. In the EU, previous research focused on farms of multi-megawatt MPP (ocean renewable devices + aquaculture systems), with very few/no attempts to investigate lower rated power systems suitable for island/coastal communities. In China, previous projects aimed at island communities focused on renewable energy, but they did not integrate any aquaculture elements.
Therefore, for island communities, novel fundamental questions arise, especially in terms of techno-economic feasibility and assessment and maximization of socio-environmental benefits at a completely different scale, but still requiring a whole-system, cross-disciplinary approach.

The proposed solution is to investigate which are the specific challenges arising from the integration of these different offshore technologies, and with a multi-disciplinary approach to tackle them, making sure that all the dimensions (technological, economic, social, environmental, legal) are taken into account.
The renewable energy technologies (Which wind turbine? Which wave device? What kind of solar panel?) and aquaculture systems most suitable for the needs of an island community will be identified, and the "cross-disciplinary" questions will be defined, e.g. "What is the impact of the noise generated by the renewable energy devices on the (closely co-located) aquaculture species growth rate?".

Answering these questions, the novel contribution will consist in developing approaches to assess the feasibility of an MPP system, focusing on: global MPP dynamic response to metocean conditions, overall integrated control and power management strategies, environmental impact, socio-economic risks and benefits.
The potential of these methodologies will be then show-cased through two case-studies, one focusing on an island community in China, and one in the UK.

This consortium brings together internationally recognised experts from three Chinese and three British universities and institutes, for a total of 20 investigators, in the fields of solar and offshore wind and wave energy, control systems for renewable energy devices, environmental and socio-economic impact of renewables and aquaculture systems, aquaculture and integrated multi-trophic aquaculture development, and ecosystem modelling. These investigators are also leading members of the research community, directly involved in: Renewable Energy Key Lab of Chinese Academy of Sciences, IEC and Chinese National Standardization Committee for Marine Energy Devices, Supergen Wind Hub, EU Energy Research Alliance JP Wind, ITTC Ocean Engineering Committee, the Royal Institution of Naval Architects Maritime Innovation Committee, ICES WG-Marine Mammal Ecology, International Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem, Ecopath Consortium Advisory Board.

This project will provide solutions to the engineering, environmental and socio-economic issues that will help support energy and food security in the UK and China. This will have direct benefits for the respective national economies and public health.

The major result of the project will be to improve the understanding of the internal interactions among the Multi-Purpose Platform (MPP) subsystems, and the external interactions with the wider, external marine ecosystem. This will be of interest to a number of industries, primarily in China and in the UK.

Aquaculture industry is investigating the possibility to move further offshore, since at the moment they are limited to nearshore conditions, and the harsher far offshore conditions may be extremely challenging. Integrating their systems with facilities able to cope with the harsher conditions, and potentially finding in these a "safe harbour" for the aquaculture systems operation and maintenance, is potentially the best way forward to overcome these challenges. Furthermore, exploiting renewable energy will made the whole operation more sustainable.

The wind turbine, wave energy device, and solar panel industry will have access to the tools to assess the techno-economic feasibility of using their products in a multi-purpose platform, potentially opening a whole new market. Most importantly, thanks to the multi-disciplinary nature of the methodologies developed, the potential negative socio-environmental impacts will be "prevented by design". Furthermore, Europe has the largest number of wind turbines installed offshore, but so far has focused only on large machines (multi-MW); through this project and its case studies, the feasibility of lower rated power machines, integrated with aquaculture systems and serving the local community, will be demonstrated.

In order to make sure that these industries benefit from this research, a number of dedicated communications channels will be set up to allow effective interaction with a wide range of identified stakeholders and a broader community engagement. These include project website, micro blog (twitter or similar), and professional social media (LinkedIn or similar). In addition, a planned programme of stakeholder and outreach events will be organised to foster direct communication and external engagement. This will include two Open Community Workshops (OCWs), and workshops/special sessions at relevant offshore renewable energy conferences.
Existing well-established Chinese, UK, and European networks (see Pathways to Impact document) will be exploited to directly engage with them and strengthen communication and outreach activities. These networks are also active at the high Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs), where these industries operate. Project partners have strong links with all these organisations that will facilitate direct and effective communication.
An Industrial Advisory Board (IAB) will be established. Its membership will include all project partners, academic and industrial. Along with its role in project oversight, guidance and advice regarding industry drivers, it will also offer an opportunity for high level industrial engagement and the development of a project industrial network.

In addition to face to face and digital engagement, extensive use will be made of printed/web based media, articles will be offered to journalists of professional technical journals, such as Offshore Marine technology, The Naval Architect, Modern Energy Review, Fish Farmer Magazine, which can be read by industrial engineering managers, and the aquaculture industry worldwide. The data sets and numerical simulation outputs, once published by the investigators, will be made available for use by academic and industrial beneficiaries, through the online research data repository of the institutions involved in this project.