Page 20: of Marine Technology Magazine (January 2024)

TECH FEATURE WAVE POWER “We found an interesting market and application where we’re deploying the

MARINE technology: decarbonizing oil and gas.

TECHNOLOGY

TV

I’m talking about powering sub-sea

Watch the full interview with Cameron McNatt: equipment in the oil and gas sector.”

Cameron McNatt, Mocean Energy

All images courtesy Mocean Energy proposing is the distributed renewable model. So instead of You talked about decarbonizing oil and gas, but where else running a cable, we provide renewable energy where it’s need- do you see potential for this Blue Star technology?

ed. We’re trying to change the narrative and say, yes, we use Besides pulling hydrocarbons out of the ground, the industry is wave energy, but our product is also going to have solar panels very keen to sequester CO2 into the ground. There are projects and battery storage is a really important part of it. that are being developed where you’re going to put very similar

We’re providing an offshore renewable microgrid solution, technology offshore to put CO2 into the ground. You have [the power and communication. So we can link up to various wire- push for residency for ] autonomous subsea vehicles, [a subsea less communications including the growing low orbit satellite docking station that needs power]. There’s emerging things like network, Starlink and others. Within that we can offer a cost subsea data centers, direct water CO2 capture from the oceans, savings CO2 savings and it’s really low hanging fruit in this rather than pulling it out of the air, people are talking about pull- decarbonization challenge. It’s much faster and less expensive ing it out of the ocean, and that kind of technology needs power. to install these kinds of systems than, say, powering an entire offshore platform with a wind farm. And there is a substantial Let’s look at the Blue Star technology today. Can you discuss

CO2 savings. So with one of our small machines, we estimate where it’s at in its development cycle and what’s your time- that we can save as much CO2 as a machine that generates 10 line for its commercialization?

times as much power in a traditional renewables market. 2024 is all about commercializing Blue Star. We have had our prototype out at sea for 14 months, cumulatively it’ll be tested through next spring. And we feel that that gives us enough con? dence in the performance of the technology that we can roll it out as a product. Certainly things have not gone perfectly, but if they went perfectly, we wouldn’t learn any- thing. We’re taking all of those learnings and we’re applying them along with the kind of commercial design into the prod- uct. So that product is being designed and we’re doing studies for customers right now, front-end engineering, design stud- ies, feasibility studies, things like that towards getting the ? rst

Blue Star orders in 2024 and 2025.

When you look at 2024, what are the key milestones you hope to achieve?

It’s completing that trial next spring and demonstrating this as success of the technology. It’s getting that substantial commer- cial traction from a customer, really towards getting a system offshore. And then we’re also working on scaling up, so we’re

The front of the machine has this big slope plate that ensures working on the larger scale technology, the Blue Horizon. So that the bow always stays submerged. Waves are over topping we have a project to get that in the water in a couple of years. (the unit) and that’s a natural load shedding mechanism.

20 January/February 2024

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