Offshore Energy Digital Architecture: Supporting the integration of the data and digital infrastructure

08 September 2021 2 minute read

Implementing a sector-wide data and infrastructure strategy to enable digitisation.

This collaborative, enabling project will bring together operators, the supply chain, and advisory organisations to initiate the development of an Offshore Energy Digital Architecture (OEDA). This architecture will support the integration of the data and digital infrastructure that is required to deliver the future offshore energy system and demonstrate that we can secure, capture and make available critical industry data, in an open and collaborative way. This will provide an opportunity to develop our people and protect future jobs.

As we move to decarbonise the energy industry, the architecture of the offshore energy system will become increasingly complex with diverse technologies deployed and a dependency on data and standards to allow effective and efficient exchange of data. Transformation will be excessively costly if technologies are not deployed in a coordinated, collaborative way.

The project will complement and supplement the three other digital project propositions under the centre’s Net Zero Technology Transition Programme (NZTTP) that seek to rapidly deliver robotic and communication systems; optimise offshore manning and seeks to provide a data map that will signpost the D4NZ programme to existing relevant data across the energy ecosystem, as well as sharing its research output. Ultimately unlocking the key benefits of safer, more efficient, and environmentally friendly operations while reducing offshore CO2 emissions.

The OEDA project has been designed using Net Zero Technology Centres extensive experience of delivering collaborative industry consortium projects. The project will act as an enabling link between the Digital North Sea Projects.

Later phases of the project will deliver the Offshore Energy data hub which will provide the ability for the industry and the wider digital ecosystem to have open and trusted access to relevant industry data sets. A digital energy technology ecosystem which will maximise the UKCS-related digital activity will provide significant export potential – Scotland will be leading the way.

Net Zero Technology Transition Programme

In August 2021, the Net Zero Technology Centre was awarded £16.5million from the Scottish Government’s Energy Transition Fund. The award, match-funded by industry, will drive seven projects:

Energy Hub
Hydrogen Backbone Link
Alternative Fuel Gas Turbines
Offshore Low Touch Energy Robotics and Autonomous Systems (OLTER)
Advancing Remote Operations
Data for Net Zero (D4NZ)
Offshore Energy Digital Architecture

The projects are designed to develop the skills, technologies, and infrastructure that Scotland needs to deliver an affordable green economic recovery.

We don’t simply want to deliver net zero for the UK, we want to seize the full economic benefits of doing so in a global market with huge export potential – and maintain that advantage long into the future.