The UK’s subsea players are keeping close tabs on an innovative demonstrator project under way off the northern coast of Scotland, where a prototype wave-energy device and seabed battery system have been powering subsea equipment since around the beginning of March this year.

The project, called Renewables for Subsea Power (RSP), ties together multiple subsea industry objectives — reducing emissions, cutting costs, enabling remote operations and moving more activities to the seabed — in a system that its backers aim to see fully qualified this summer.