Carbon Trust launches global competition

Looking at £213 million in insurance losses from 28 UK offshore wind claims between 2002 and 2015, 68% were directly due to cable faults occurring predominately during the construction phase. Condition monitoring techniques used during the installation process have the potential to reduce instances of these faults, as they can be used to monitor the cable condition and detect potential issues before they develop into failures. Developing a novel monitoring system could dramatically improve the reliability of offshore wind subsea cable systems by ensuring that the cables' mechanical limits are not exceeded in real-time during load out, installation jointing and wind farm operation.

Jan Matthiesen, director of Offshore Wind at the Carbon Trust, “Damage to cables during the installation of an offshore wind farm is unfortunately a common occurrence, which also results in unnecessary expenditure for the industry. The challenge we face is finding a cost-effective, easy to connect and operate, robust and reliable system which can be used to monitor the condition of subsea cables throughout the cable installation phase. Through this international innovation competition we are really interested in receiving applications from other industries around the world, which have capabilities in measuring and monitoring physical parameters that could result in cable damage.”

Competition entries will be assessed by an expert panel from the OWA. The Scottish Government and the nine OWA developer partners are providing up to £225,000 to support successful innovative concepts. Concepts that show the most promise could also receive further funding to take them to full-scale demonstration.