ABERDEEN-based Verlume, a specialist in clean energy system integration, intelligent energy management and energy storage, is fulfilling its mission to deliver clean energy to challenging locations and make things possible today that were impossible yesterday. With an increasing headcount and sales growth in 2023 across several markets including offshore wind, subsea monitoring, and offshore charging, the company has increased its orders booked ten-fold year on year and is on target to deliver a 400% increase in revenue for the financial year.
Following recent successful demonstrations of the company’s technology and securing significant commercial sales, the Verlume team is growing to further deliver on its mission. Verlume’s highly skilled team now has 30 dynamic professionals from a range of technical backgrounds from electrical, electronic, software and mechanical engineering to wider business functions such as project management and HR. There are 7 roles currently open within the business.
In terms of sales, the business won a significant contract from RWE, one of the world’s largest offshore wind developers and operators. Verlume will partner with RWE to engineer and integrate Halo subsea battery energy storage systems, incorporating Axonn intelligent energy management technology. These will be deployed within the 760MW wind farm OranjeWind in the Dutch North Sea.
Verlume’s subsea energy storage and Axonn solutions are intending to explore the applicability of these technologies for system integration for scalable and flexible demand of energy, to match the supply profile of an offshore wind farm.
Additionally, Verlume secured a contract to supply three of the ‘Charge’ battery systems for bespoke subsea monitoring applications. Charge is Verlume’s compact, rechargeable battery solution which provides reliable and safe energy in challenging locations to enable long duration seabed monitoring for stationary systems. Verlume has also developed a business stream for rental systems and has started building the first rental Charge systems, following receipt of the first rental order for this solution.
The company is also developing offshore charging stations powered by renewable energy for wind farm maintenance vessels and autonomous underwater vehicles. Two separate demonstration projects for these systems are scheduled for 2024.
The Renewables for Subsea Power (RSP), a joint industry funded project, connecting a Halo underwater battery system supplied by Verlume with Mocean Energy’s Blue X wave energy convertor to prove the concept of using renewables to power subsea equipment has been extended from 4 months to 12 months following the onboarding of several additional participants into the joint industry project.
Richard Knox, Chief Executive Officer at Verlume said: “These recent contract wins demonstrate the success of our strategy and continued growth at pace, in line with our company mission.
“We are excited to begin our journey in the offshore wind sector with RWE at OranjeWind and see this as a key growth market, both from the larger energy storage use cases, as well as the potential to decarbonise operations and maintenance activities. Thank you to the team at RWE for their support to date.
“We are also experiencing a strong pipeline of enquiries for our Charge offering and are delighted to be supplying units for sale, as well as developing the rental market. With a sales order book that is still growing, we are looking forward to further milestones for the business in the rest of the financial year.”
