PowerX, a Japanese company founded to spearhead innovation in offshore power development has announced the launch of its new product: a maritime vessel to carry electricity from offshore wind farms onshore
A visualisation of PowerX’s Power Transfer Vessel, an automated ship being developed to transport energy from offshore wind farms onshore. Credit: PowerX website
PowerX, a Japanese company founded to spearhead innovation in offshore power development has announced the launch of its new product: a maritime vessel to carry electricity from offshore wind farms onshore. The company is calling it the Power Transfer Vessel (PTV). PowerX will design and build a massive battery payload that will be integrated with the shipʼs controls to transport offshore wind power to shore.
Japan is surrounded by deep coastal waters, which limit the potential range for setting up offshore wind farms. Typically, transporting energy generated offshore involves constructing high voltage undersea cables. An undersea power cable typically requires expensive construction that comes with substantial environmental impacts. Comparatively, the PTV stands out as it is resilient to natural disasters, requires less time and cost for development, leaves minimal impact on the environment, and therefore is able to expand the potential of offshore wind power significantly.
The Japanese government targets for renewable energy to generate 36-38% of the countryʼs power production in 2030, a major upgrade from its previous plan of 22-24%. This will require a boost of offshore wind power from the current 20MW to 10GW by 2030 and to 30-45GW by 2040. PowerX’s PTV solution can potentially lift the restriction on where power generation must be located. This will allow greater flexibility for offshore wind farm locations, especially for an island country like Japan.
Currently, Paolo Cerruti, Co-founder and COO of Northvolt, Caesar Sengupta, ex-VP and General Manager at Google and Mark Tercek, former CEO at The Nature Conservancy and Former Partner at Goldman Sachs are the non-executive directors of PowerX.
