The Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult has won funding for five projects as part of the Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition, funded by the Department for Transport and delivered in partnership with Innovate UK.
The projects will convene industry, the supply chain and Government to address the policy, commercial, regulatory and technical barriers to achieving maritime decarbonisation.
One of the Competition’s flagship projects is a feasibility study into establishing a National Clean Maritime Demonstration Hub in ABP’s Grimsby docks. ORE Catapult will lead this project alongside nine supply chain partners and two industrial advisors.
The other four projects are:
- A project led by Artemis Technologies to further develop their eFoiler technology.
- Working alongside MJR Power & Automation to develop a world-first offshore vessel charging system taking power from an offshore wind farm.
- A project led by Concept Systems Ltd (CSL) investigating data-led emissions management.
- Development of an offshore wind power barge, providing vessel-to-vessel charging capability, to be led by Aluminium Marine Consultants (AMC).
Offshore wind has ambitious growth and decarbonisation targets and engages the UK’s maritime fleet and its Ports across all aspects of its lifecycle – from installation to decommissioning
says ORE Catapult.
Simon Edmonds, Deputy Executive Chair and Chief Business Officer for Innovate UK added:
Projects
National Clean Maritime Demonstration Hub
The project will conduct a feasibility study that, informing a business case for infrastructure-investment in Zero-Emission (ZE) Fuels/charging-infrastructure at the Port of Grimsby, at the same time as investment in operational programmes of work that will establish Grimsby as a national Clean Maritime Demonstration Hub (CMDH).
Artemis electric eFoiler CTV
Led by Artemis Technologies and building on the work of the emerging Belfast Maritime Consortium cluster as a global centre of excellence for zero-emission maritime technology, this project brings together partners from across the whole supply chain to investigate the feasibility of the Artemis-eFoiler electric propulsion system as a transformative solution to decarbonise global CTV operations.
Offshore wind on-turbine electrical vessel charging system
This project will design, build, and test an electric charge point situated on a wind turbine. This approach will access the infrastructure already in place (turbine platform, electrical cables) to provide renewable electricity to vessels.
As an eCTV ‘docks’ with the turbine a cable reel will lower down an electrical charge connection which will plug in to the vessel and charge a battery on-board. Although the technology necessary for this is relatively mature this has yet to be done before and so this project will need to develop standards, working practices and procedures in order to safely carry this out at sea.
Data Led Emissions Management (D-LEMA)
This project builds upon proven solutions to provide an innovative approach to the analysis of vessel emissions, a sector that, to date, has lacked a clear analytic methodology. It will utilise the ION Geo Marlin solution as a base, proven over more than 150 global deployments, to integrate data from an existing activity database. The resulting solution will provide historical backlogged performance analytics as a baseline, as well as close to real-time performance analytics via a range of standard dashboards that will enable the port and vessel operators to review performance.
OWL Charging Vessel
This project will complete a detaileld design and operational simulation of a mothership charging vessel, hosting a number of electric CTV’s. The mothership will take the concept of in-field charging and provide a solution capable of removing diesel emissions from offshore wind Operations and Maintenance. This project represents genuine architectural and disruptive innovation, by mirroring the availability of onshore charging into a system capable of functioning effectively in an offshore market.
