HOUSTON— A division of Teledyne Technologies Inc., a California-headquartered conglomerate known for its arsenal of technology, has taken its fuel cell system technology originally developed for NASA applications to the sea.

Fuel cells use hydrogen, or a different fuel source, to produce electricity. Other byproducts of the chemical process, which combines hydrogen and oxygen atoms, include heat and water. While the technology has been used to provide water for astronauts in space, Teledyne Energy Systems’ Jason Foess explained, it is also being used to provide power subsea for the oil and gas sector.

Launched in 2019, Teledyne’s “subsea supercharger” provides untethered power subsea, enabling autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) to power up and serving as backup power source for offshore infrastructure.

The fuel cell-based subsea power system, which stores hydrogen and oxygen, can provide up to 20 kilowatts of untethered power and store up to 30 megawatt hours (MWh) of energy, the company said.

“The most interest these days is backup power for the subsea HPUs [hydraulic power units] and SEMs [subsea electrical modules], and replacing the power from failing umbilicals; that has been a huge draw that we never expected,” Foess, business manager for Teledyne Energy Systems, told attendees of Teledyne Marine’s Technology Focus Day on Nov. 20.

Offshore players are asking how the subsea supercharger can help run wells for another five years and how it can be used to provide power on voltage-limited umbilicals, he said.

The system utilizes Teledyne’s proton exchange membrane fuel cell technology, which the company said provides more than 10,000 hours of life.

“The fuel cell system features an integrated balance-of-plant (BoP) with ejector driven reactant (EDR) technology for reactant recirculation,” the company said on its website. “The BoP allows the fuel cell stack to be fed reactants in a ‘dead-ended’ configuration maximizing energy delivery.”

The system’s stack design can also be tailored for operation with pure oxygen.

“All that matters is what amount of energy you need, and we will configure the fuel cell stack to be most efficient,” Foess said. “The fuel cell stack itself can process up to 30 megawatt hours of energy before we see a degradation of the cell.”

Unlike batteries, the system doesn’t have a shelf life.

“If you don’t consume the energy and the storage, the energy is [still] there. So, if you set it down or leave it a year, it’s going to have the same amount of energy as when you set it down,” he said.

When Teledyne was looking for uses other than the space program for the fuel cell technology, the ocean seemed a logical choice given the need for power for various applications. The company first looked at how fuel cells could be used to power an AUV, focusing on different reactant storage.

“We found that no matter how we store the hydrogen and oxygen, we could beat batteries for performance,” Foess said, noting the company looked at low pressure, high pressure and cryogenic storage along with external tank storage. “In every case, we could improve upon the life, the operating time, of the AUV using our fuel cell, which was great.”

Initial thoughts were to use fuel cells to directly power AUVs, but the fact that there are many difficult styles of AUVs prompted the company to change course—becoming the “gas station for the car” instead of the “engine in the car,” he said.

That led to Teledyne putting energy subsea and providing a place for assets to recharge.

From a capital standpoint, Foess said the system is less expensive than rechargeable batteries, which have to be refilled after the reactant is consumed. “I can provide 850 kilowatt hours of energy storage for about the same price you can get for 425 kw hours of rechargeable batteries,” he said.

Teledyne's subsea supercharger undergoes a pool test. (Source: Teledyne Energy Systems)
Teledyne's subsea supercharger undergoes a pool test. (Source: Teledyne Energy Systems)

Batteries, however, have better density, Foess added. A fuel cell system with about 1 MWh of power is about the size of a 20-ft ISO container, he said, adding “we’re trading basically volume for cost and efficiency.”

Teledyne said in February it successfully demonstrated the fuel cell system at Narragansett Bay Test Facility in Newport, Rhode Island, where it powered a resident remote operated vehicle. It was also demonstrated at the General Atomics Subsea Power test facility in San Diego, California. Here, the fuel cell was supplied reactants by General Atomic Electromagnetic System’s Aluminum Power System as the fuel cell powered an ROV, proving its recharging capability.