Resilience Toolkit for Offshore Energy Systems (ResTOrES)

Offshore energy systems are expected to play a vital role in the UK’s transition to net-zero. These systems – which will comprise offshore electricity and hydrogen production, multi-vector energy networks, and energy conversion systems – will need to be inherently resilient while also enhancing the resilience of the onshore systems to which they connect. However, whilst there are tools and methods for studying the reliability and resilience of individual components of the offshore energy system, there is a lack of integrated tools which can assess the resilience of the whole offshore energy system and account for crucial interdependencies. Fortunately, by adapting existing research on energy system resilience and multi-vector energy networks, our proposal can address this gap without the need for new fundamental research. The ResTOrES project will develop, test, and demonstrate a prototype resilience assessment toolkit for offshore energy systems. The toolkit will enable the quantification of resilience in terms of appropriate metrics during both standard operation and extreme events. The ResTOrES toolkit will make use of high-resolution climate model outputs to ensure that weather impacts can be appropriately represented within the extreme events for both a present day and future climate. The energy-climate data previously developed by the project team includes projections from multiple climate models including state-of-the-art data from the UK climate projections (UKCP18). A case study will be used to test and demonstrate the toolkit. This will focus on the North Sea, which will be connected to an existing multi-vector onshore network model of the North of Tyne region. The resilience of the offshore energy system, whose design will be informed by project stakeholders and proposed offshore developments, will be assessed as will the impact on the resilience of the onshore energy system. Different interventions to enhance will be tested and their impact on resilience will be quantified using new resilience metrics developed within the project. The value of taking a systems approach will also be quantified by comparing resilience from a whole system perspective with the current, siloed approach in which projects are considered in isolation. The case study systems and scenarios will give us the capability to test the prototype toolkit, refine it, and demonstrate its capabilities. At the end point of the project we aim to bring the toolkit to a level of maturity which can be passed on to a project partner for implementation as a product or service.