Hybrid Power Solution in West Africa Offshore Shallow Water Projects

Abstract Reliable power supply for remote unmanned offshore wellhead platforms (WHPs) remains a recurring challenge in shallow- water West Africa, where long submarine power imports and diesel-only generation can be difficult to justify technically, economically, and environmentally. This paper presents a pre-FEED engineering framework developed for the HOBA WHP in the Niger Delta to enable a renewable-dominant power architecture based on solar photovoltaic (PV), small wind turbines, nickel-cadmium (Ni-Cd) battery energy storage, and a standby diesel generator. The study combines site-specific resource screening, technology benchmarking against comparable offshore hybrid deployments, and a ground-up load rationalization process tailored to unmanned operations. The most important design step was not equipment selection, but demand reduction: the preliminary analogous-platform load basis of approximately 130 kW was reduced to about 65 kW total platform load, while the continuous unmanned demand was reduced from 14.46 kW to 6.37 kW. This load optimization reduced the indicative PV deck area requirement from approximately 600 m2 to about 200 m2 and made a hybrid offshore concept physically feasible within the WHP footprint. Long-term resource screening indicates that the project location has sufficient solar irradiation to make PV the dominant daytime energy source, while low-to-moderate coastal wind provides complementary night-time and cloudy-period support. The resulting concept adopts a DC-centric power architecture with multi-day battery autonomy and a standby diesel generator reserved for manned campaigns and contingency operation. The paper demonstrates that hybrid solar-wind-battery systems can be technically credible for small, unmanned shallow-water platforms in West Africa, provided that the design is anchored in disciplined load rationalization, realistic metocean data, and integration with platform layout and operations philosophy. The workflow is repeatable for similar WHPs seeking lower emissions, lower logistics exposure, and improved lifecycle resilience.