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Underwater Substation Pod (USP) Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) has developed an innovative Underwater Substation Pod™ (USP) as a cost-effective, environmentally responsible means of networking and transmitting offshore power and data to onshore electric utility grids.
Capabilities The USP can aggregate up to ten offshore power generation devices into one common interconnection point (e.g. wave, tidal and offshore wind) for economic, undersea power transformation and data communication. It is designed to step up low voltages generated by offshore devices to medium voltage (11 kiloVolts – 15 kiloVolts) compatible with onshore electrical distribution. In addition to step-up capabilities, the USP also provides full relay and fault protection, a full suite of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) capabilities, and allows the operator to remotely control electrical safety equipment. Critical design features of the USP include the elimination where possible of any moving parts and implementation of redundancy in specific areas to ensure high reliability and low cost maintenance. The USP can also be configured for step-down capabilities for providing shore based power to other offshore electrical requirements including oil & gas, offshore carbon storage, and marine aquaculture applications. Installation The USP is designed for applications in depths of up to approximately 150 ft (50 m) and can be installed on most seabed bottom conditions. Future Developments A 1.5 MW USP was built and tested as part of OPT’s Santoña (Spain) project with Iberdrola Renewables. OPT is also developing a range of multiple applications compatible with the USP such as integrating: • Modem to receive external device information (e.g. load cell and strain gauge data) • Hard-wired Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (ADCPs) for assessment of real-time wave and current resources • Detachable ROV for undersea visual monitoring of devices, cables and environmental parameters. • Hydrophones for acoustic monitoring USP Marine Applications Our USP technology can be tailored to suit a range of marine applications including: • Wave • Tidal • In-stream • Marine Aquaculture • Offshore Wind • Offshore Oil & Gas • Offshore Carbon Capture and Storage Patent Applications have been filed for the USP. |
