The Problem:
It is difficult and expensive to get power offshore, particularly for small equipment. In the UK CCS industry, most of the sites for storing CO2 are offshore, which requires the development of a tieback. These tiebacks will not be near existing infrastructure, like platforms. To get power to them, the state of the art is to run a subsea cable with power and comms for sometimes more than 100 km, which can cost £10’s of millions, and has a large CO2 footprint in the embedded carbon and the installation of the cable.The Solution:
Our product, Blue Star, generates renewable energy from ocean waves stores it in batteries and distributes it to offshore and subsea equipment. It is specifically sized to meet the needs of standalone equipment and tiebacks. Blue Star is able to provide power and a wireless communications link to CCS tiebacks eliminating the need for a long subsea cable, and savings £10’s of millions and 10-100,000 TCO2 per project.The Differentiator:
Technology: our wave energy converter has a novel, patented, geometry that was developed through numerical optimisation. It to produces 2-3x more power per size than other designs. We are developing a low-speed, high torque direct drive generator to drastically improve reliability.
Commercial: we are starting small, with offshore off-grid applications (e.g. CCS) where wave energy is cost competitive now. Then we will scale in machine size and market: islands and combined wind-wave farms.Biggest Achievement:
Renewables for Subsea Power field trial: Our Blue X prototype wave energy converter is deployed offshore Orkney providing power to a subsea battery system, a Baker Hughes subsea control module, and an autonomous underwater vehicle. The system has reliably produced power and survived exterme seas since its February deployment. It is funded by operators: Harbour, Serica, and two others (to be announced). 
