SolarDuck and MARIN Win €3.2M to Develop Offshore Floating Solar Power Hub for Remote Subsea and CCS Applications
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SolarDuck and the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands have been awarded a US$3.64 million subsidy from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency for the Steady Seas research programme, advancing the foundational design of SolarDuck's Offshore Floating Power and Utility Hub, a redeployable offshore solar platform designed to provide reliable renewable power, communications, and utility services to remote offshore and subsea assets. The programme builds on operational experience from SolarDuck's DEI+ Merganser project in the Dutch North Sea and will combine hydrodynamic analysis, basin testing, and system integration work to produce a robust basic design ahead of demonstration projects with offshore industry partners.
The Remote Power Problem the OFPH Addresses
As offshore energy activity moves further from shore, the challenge of providing reliable power to subsea oil and gas infrastructure, carbon capture and storage projects, offshore monitoring systems, and other remote assets becomes increasingly costly and complex. Current solutions typically rely on long subsea cables, umbilicals, or local diesel generation, each of which carries significant installation cost, operational vulnerability, and in the case of diesel, substantial carbon intensity. SolarDuck's Offshore Floating Power and Utility Hub is designed as an alternative that generates renewable power at the point of need, supported by integrated energy storage and auxiliary systems to maintain continuous operations regardless of solar intermittency. The potential to reduce lifecycle costs for CCS and subsea tieback projects is commercially significant because it could lower the economic threshold at which these assets become viable, unlocking investment opportunities that are currently constrained by the cost and complexity of power supply infrastructure.
Research Scope and MARIN Contribution
Under the Steady Seas programme, SolarDuck will lead the overall OFPH design and system integration while MARIN contributes hydrodynamic analysis, simulations, and basin testing to validate the platform's behaviour, reliability, and wave response under realistic offshore conditions. The programme addresses key technical questions across hydrodynamic performance, mooring and motion behaviour, integration of power and communication systems, and the interface with subsea infrastructure. Basin testing at MARIN provides a controlled environment for validating the platform's response to realistic North Sea wave conditions before committing to the cost and complexity of offshore demonstration, reducing technical risk and strengthening the evidence base for attracting industry partners to the subsequent demonstration phase. The combination of applied research and technology development is designed to translate lessons from earlier offshore solar pilots into a sector-specific platform design with validated performance characteristics.
Pathway to Demonstration and Commercial Deployment
Following completion of the research phase, SolarDuck intends to move toward offshore demonstration in collaboration with industry partners, with Joint Industry Projects currently being established to test the OFPH in operational offshore conditions and validate its ability to power and control remote assets in real environments. The JIP model is well suited to this stage of technology development because it distributes the cost of demonstration across multiple industry stakeholders while generating performance data that is credible to the full range of potential customers across oil and gas, CCS, and offshore monitoring sectors. The progression from the DEI+ Merganser pilot through the Steady Seas design programme to planned industrial demonstration represents a structured development pathway that is increasingly required by offshore energy operators before committing to novel technology in their operations.
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This article was contributed by an external writer affiliated with our publication.
