Offshore floating solar company SolarDuck and the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN) have been awarded a €3.2 million subsidy from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) for the Steady Seas research programme.
The project will advance the foundational design of SolarDuck’s Offshore Floating Power & Utility Hub (OFPH), a single-platform offshore solar technology developed to provide power, communications, and other utilities to remote offshore and subsea assets.
Steady Seas builds on the operational experience and data gathered through SolarDuck’s DEI+ Merganser project in the Dutch North Sea. Under the new programme, SolarDuck will lead the overall hub design and system integration. MARIN will contribute hydrodynamic analysis, simulations, and basin testing to validate the platform’s behaviour, reliability, and wave response under realistic offshore conditions.
The results will support the next step toward demonstration projects with offshore industry partners.
The project combines applied research and technology development to address key technical questions for the system, including hydrodynamic performance, mooring and motion behaviour, integration of power and communication systems, and the interface with subsea infrastructure.
“The technical challenges of powering assets far offshore are significant, from mooring and motion behaviour to integration with subsea infrastructure. This programme gives us the means to engineer and validate robust answers before the system is deployed at sea,” said Don Hoogendoorn, Chief Technical Officer of SolarDuck.
