Page 35: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (November 2022)

FEATURE FLOATING POWER BARGES

Beyond shoreside hotel power, there’s ? oating, utility-sized power, or ? oating power plants. At the core of these are some familiar names in marine propulsion and national grid power — Wartsila,

Siemens Energy, MAN Energy Solutions. Challenging the status quo and working with these paradigm power producers are consortia of companies from the renewables and offshore sectors. Driving development are developing-world demand, the renewal of diesel plants, subsidy and electricity shortages worldwide. Sweetening the pot is a chance to produce unproven fuels hydrogen and ammonia.

By William Stoichevski ow-water marks in reservoirs that once provided the cheapest electricity in Europe now trigger electricity price shocks and national power-bill bailouts in the world’s richest country. The gov-

L ernment action here and everywhere during the 2022 energy crisis are stirring new faith in power projects.

What follows is a survey of ? oating power players and proj- ects with heavy backing.

In Norway, going greener has pushed bewildered politicians into supporting the electri? cation of oil platforms from land.

That has helped jack-up power bills, as the raw, equivalent diesel power required by an offshore oil? eld can be equated to the power needs of a city. The solution, says a coalition of companies in Norway, is ? oating gas-? red power plant, or

FGPP, that captures and injects carbon-dioxide into subsea reservoirs and can send power to shore.

As elsewhere with emergent ? oating power, Siemens En- ergy is at the core of Norwegian designs to ? oat a gas-? red power plant, or FGPP, out to somewhere between land and power-hungry offshore platforms. Together with gas process engineers, Kanfa, Siemens Energy is part of the Blaa Stroem (Blue Power) alliance that aims to put a GPP aboard a Sevan cylindrical rig and sequester and pump the CO2 it produces, its ? ue gasses, into the oil? eld reservoir as “gas lift” to keep pressure and oil production up and increase reserves: or just to store the maligned gas permanently in a saline aquifer. The ? oater’s tanks could be used to store fuel, CO2, well stream or, conceivably, hydrogen — turning “grey” (? ue-gas de- rived) hydrogen “blue” (produced via steam methane reform- ing, or SMR, with carbon capture and storage/sequestration, or CCS). H2 can also be derived from heated sea water (elec- trolysis) or directly from natural gas. www.marinelink.com 35

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