The partnerships shaping Stillstrom and Aberdeen's role in offshore electrification

By Graeme Wood, Stillstrom’s MD based in Aberdeen

No offshore technology gets from concept to commercial reality on the strength of one company's ambition alone. It takes a supply chain willing to back the initiative, , engineers prepared to solve problems nobody has solved before, and partners who stay in the room when progress depends on a new and evolving market. This is the real story behind Stillstrom's pioneering offshore charging technology and its presence in Aberdeen.

Stillstrom was formally established as a UK entity earlier this year. It is a useful milestone, but it is not where this story starts. Stillstrom UK is founded on four years of work already delivered by a team with more than 60 years of North Sea experience between them, and by the local companies who helped build it with us.

The firm's roots were established in 2019 in Copenhagen and in Aberdeen, where its Scottish based contingent worked within Maersk Supply Services and began on what would become the Power Buoy project. The brief was specific, to design, build and commission an offshore power buoy capable of delivering 690v hotel service load to a service vessel supporting a UK North Sea wind farm. It was project managed from Aberdeen, and its success rested on the strength of the partnerships behind it, PD&MS leading the electrical and control equipment design and procurement, JDR manufacturing the power supply cable, and London Marine Consultants (LMC) carrying out the buoy detailed design and mooring analysis from London. The project gained momentum early 2022 and ran until July 2023, based at the Maersk Training Facility, in Europe's energy capital.

This undertaking did something else, too, it proved what the right collaborations, applied consistently, could achieve, and planted the idea that became Stillstrom.

The technology being developed had commercial potential well beyond a single installation, and as this possibility became clearer, Stillstrom was set up as the vehicle to take it forward. When Maersk Supply Services and Stillstrom separated organisationally, the Aberdeen team transferred across, bringing their offshore construction, subsea, electrical and project management experience with them.

We have been building on that base ever since.

In November 2022, we completed a study with the Port of Aberdeen on developing an offshore charging facility in Aberdeen Bay and completed several conceptual studies with a range of Wind Farm Operators, benefiting from the technical support of UK based vessel operators. January 2023 saw us consolidating our charging equipment assets at Petersons' Edzell facility. By March 2024, we had moved into permanent office space on the city's Riverside Drive, and throughout the year we completed a series of equipment trials at ACE Winches' Towie Barcaly test facility in Turriff before moving to vessel trials in Aberdeen South Harbour in November of that year. And last year, the team managed the fabrication, testing and delivery of the Stillstrom's Offshore eCharger 6MW connector package.

The supply chain we have developed across this period is, deliberately, a local one. ACE Winches has supported equipment supply and testing. Clarksons Port Services has handled vessel and port logistics. The Port of Aberdeen has provided access to the South Harbour for trials, and Petersons, LMC and Maersk Training have each played a part, across everything from buoy and mooring system design to vessel technical interfaces, marine operations and crew training. These are not transactional relationships. They are partnerships built over years of working through the genuine complexity of bringing a new offshore technology to market.

This challenge is worth being clear about. Offshore electrification is not a narrow equipment challenge. Getting it right means addressing the full value chain from the technology itself, the standards to which it should operate, the legislation that governs it and the commercial models that make it viable for operators and vessel owners alike. Stillstrom has worked across all of it. This breadth of thinking, and the persistence required to maintain it when progress is slow and the path is unclear, is what has moved our offshore power and charging technology from a concept with a strong potential to a commercially and technically credible solution.

The formal establishment of Stillstrom UK earlier this year has opened further doors to accelerate the next phase of development, but the team, the relationships and the track record were already here. The North Sea is not a market we are entering - it is one we have been working in, quietly and consistently, for several years.