Orsted is one of three winners sharing a £1m prize for winning a competition aimed at boosting electrification of offshore oil and gas installations.
The Danish energy company is the project lead on an initiative, which has secured £239,360, addressing technical and commercial requirements of wind farm connections with offshore installations.
The concept study will use Orsted’s Hornsea offshore wind farm lease area and an existing gas platform in the Southern North Sea, to explore the optimal technical design for a stable and reliable power supply from an offshore wind farm.
The four-month feasibility study will also investigate the commercial solutions for establishing an electrical connection between an offshore wind farm and other installations.
The aim is to provide a solution that could be scaled, replicated, and applied to any wind farm and platform in proximity to one another.
Orsted will deliver this project working together with two partners, Neptune Energy and Goal7.
The Decarbonisation competition for the electrification of offshore oil and gas installations was launched by the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA), working with BEIS, to fund technical and commercial studies on offshore electrification in the UK North Sea as part of the North Sea Transition Deal outcomes.
The other winners were Orcadian Energy’s innovative concepts for the electrification of offshore installations in the Central Graben, and Katoni Engineering’s optimised interface for distributed offshore renewable sources supplying existing offshore installations with secure and low-emissions power.
The three companies must now complete work on the studies by 31 March 2022, with project reports to be published in the second quarter of the same year.
OGA Chief Executive Andy Samuel said: “Rapid progress on platform electrification is vital to ensure that production emissions are halved by 2030, in line with agreed targets.
“This competition has sparked significant interest from a broad cross section of industry with an impressive range of innovative proposals.
“The investment and infrastructure to move projects forward now will be beneficial long into the future, enabling network grid and offshore wind expansion.”
Energy & Climate Change Minister Greg Hands said: “Through our landmark North Sea Transition Deal, we are ensuring the UK’s oil and gas industry’s highly-skilled workers and supply chain are protected as we shift to a lower carbon future.
“These projects, supported with £1m government funding, will drive forward plans for platform electrification, a key step in supporting the industry to decarbonise oil and gas production.”