Session: 14-01-02: Smart and Sustainable Maritime Systems

Submission Number: 155975

Testing and Field Demonstration of a Novel Floating Offshore Energy Storage Concept 

The development of innovative floating offshore energy storage systems is crucial to support the offshore renewable energy industry, particularly attaining wind farms. However, although several concepts have been proposed, none of them has yet emerged as a reference solution, nor reached a sufficiently high technology readiness level. In this context, this paper presents the testing and field demonstration of a novel floating energy storage concept, suitable to integration within offshore wind farms, carried out in 2024 at the Natural Ocean Engineering Laboratory (NOEL) of Reggio Calabria (Italy). The concept is based on the same principle of hydro plants: a salt solution, heavier than seawater, is loaded into a deformable floating tank during charge, and left falling into a submerged tank during production. The main advantages of the concept lie in its simplicity, cost-effectiveness, and environmental-friendliness, since the salt solution is easily producible in place directly from seawater and all the electric components are borrowed from well-established onshore technologies. The sea tests were performed on a fully-operative prototype, equipped with a 1 kW pump/turbine, and representative of a 1:10 model of a realistic full-scale plant. The circular floating tank was equipped with an inertial navigation system and a set of level sensors, to measure its rigid motions and vertical deformations in several points. Overall, a dataset of 895 10-min records was collected, allowing a preliminary identification of the hydro-elastic dynamic properties of the floater. Furthermore, the functionality of the plant was demonstrated at field, paving the way for the further stages of development of the concept.

Presenting Author: Carlo Ruzzo Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria

Presenting Author Biography: Carlo Ruzzo was born on August 10, 1990 in Reggio Calabria (Italy). He is a staff member of Natural Ocean Engineering Laboratory (NOEL) and a post-doc in Ocean Engineering at Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria (Italy). His research topics mainly include wave mechanics, extreme waves, wave-structure interactions, floating offshore wind turbines, multi-purpose floating platforms, etc. In this context, he is involved in numerical studies, and arrangement, management and data analysis of field experimental activities.