Floating Clean Multi-Energy Systems Towards Driving Blue Economic Growth

Abstract – Remote coastal and islandic region such as in Southeast Asia and small islandic development states (SIDS) of the Caribbean are deprived of energy that reflects in terms of poor energy per capita compared to the busy urban cities. Their regional economy greatly depends on the industrial activities such as fisheries and tourism and presently depends solely on diesel energy systems for its essential needs such as electricity and water. They spend up to 20% of their GDP towards fossil fuel imports which gets hampered during natural disasters such as hurricanes and typhoons. Presently their regional government are putting efforts in exploiting the ocean resources without affecting the ocean ecology as part of the “Blue economy growth strategy”. Accordingly, this paper presents the means to achieve energy self-sufficiency through adopting floating energy resilient solutions that are ocean based as part of their Blue economy growth strategy. Today land based solar energy systems have obtained prominence as a credible energy source and are adopted into regular energy mix in onshore applications. However, these are seen not fully exploitable in islandic settings due to limited land area for deployment. The present paper proposes the concept of hybrid energy systems that can be wisely utilize the shallow water region through floating structures and uniquely utilize available energy resources in the ocean condition and to setup ocean based energy storage type secondary applications. Various energy sources such as Tidal in-stream energy is predictable and good site conditions can be identified for turbine deployment based on the seabed and coastal bathymetry surveys combined with tidal current surveys. Detailed resource mapping and hydrodynamic modelling of the test sites helps identify the best site locations for a tidal energy system deployment to achieve minimized cost of energy. The idea of multi-energy systems helps combine with floating solar energy system along with other energy sources such as ocean thermal energy gradient and wave energy systems that can be integrated through smart grid systems which helps to maximize energy production to become high energy offshore power plants that could support the remote offshore energy needs towards self-sufficiency and resilience. Thus this paper aims to elucidate the concept of floating hybrid energy system architecture that are technologically ready towards offshore applications and support remote coastal and islandic regions’ energy needs.