Subsea UK Webinar: Offshore Wind Inspections and Subsea ......Anemoi Project • Developing a method for detecting and following buried cables in an offshore wind farm • Supporting

Subsea UK Webinar:Offshore Wind Inspections and Subsea Robotics

07/07/2020 Alex Louden

GLASGOWORE Catapult

Agenda

• Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult

• Subsea Inspections and Survey in Offshore Wind

• Introduction to Robotics for Offshore Wind Subsea Operations

• Backdrop and drivers

• Applications and use cases

• Challenges and opportunities

• Conclusion

• Q&A

ore.catapult.org.uk@orecatapult

Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult

The Catapult Network

• Designed to transform the UK's capability for innovation

• Core grant leveraged with industry and other public

funding

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Our Mission and Vision

Our mission

To accelerate the creation and growth of UK companies in the ORE sector

Our vision

By 2023, ORE Catapult will be the world’s leading offshore renewables technology centre

• Centres of Excellence

• Academic Research Hubsin partnership with leading universities

• Expanding our assets in Blyth and Levenmouth

the world’s foremost open-access facilities

Support Available for SMEs

Research, Development & Innovation

“Helping companies develop their innovations through our expert

knowledge, facilities and industry connections”

• Live Innovation Calls• Insights & Analysis• Collaborative R&D• Test & Validation• Academic Engagement

Commercialisation

“Helping companies launch new innovations into the market”

• Accelerator Programmes • Investor Engagement• Business Case Development• Market Entry Information

Company Growth

“Helping companies to win work through improving competitiveness”

• Supply Chain Readiness• Improving Competitiveness• Cross Sector Transfer• Export Opportunities

ore.catapult.org.uk@orecatapult

Subsea Inspections in Offshore Wind

One of the four key challenges in a 2018 Innovation Competition with SPR and ORE Catapult…

“Subsea Survey of cables, foundations and surrounding seabed“

Significant Market:

• 7440 Turbines Globally

• 2296 Turbines in the UK

Subsea Survey & Inspections is a Key Development Area

• Our knowledge comes from structured interviews and engagement with several wind farm operators

• There are several aspects of the foundation that are of interest in terms of inspection:

• Internal corrosion of monopile foundations

• Scour, including

• Local scour around foundations and cables

• Global scour in the wind farm

• Subsea weld integrity

• Fatigue Crack Growth

• All of these currently are, or have the potential to be carried out by underwater vehicles.

Offshore Wind Inspections

Short answer – no!

• Wind farm typically divided into quadrants

• One quadrant will undergo a survey every 6 months – cable corridors and seabed survey

• Small subset of the turbines selected for detailed inspection

• ROV Scour inspection

• ~ 10-20 % of turbines in the quadrant

• Input from foundation designers

• May focus on those with known issues

• Foundation designers recommend each turbine gets a scour inspection every 5 years

Are all the turbines inspected?

• Robotics and autonomous systems have a huge potential to disrupt practices

• Engagement with operators (and turbine manufacturers) shows strong interest in reducing usage of expensive divers which carry large health and safety risk

• Underwater robotic solutions can reduce costs

• Enable more proactive monitoring & inspection – better understanding of what is happening on site

• Important for lifetime extension

• Understanding of issues varies from operator to operator and farm to farm

Things are changing!

“Doing anything subsea is very expensive, so any activities have to be very well justified”

– Anonymous Wind Farm Operator

ore.catapult.org.uk@orecatapult

Subsea Robotics in Offshore Wind

Key drivers for O&M:

• Reduce costs

• Reduce associated downtime

• Improve H&S

• Improve asset management

Big focus on:

• Minimising shutdown periods

• Avoiding sending vessels and technicians offshore

• More remote monitoring and working

• Increasing the volume and frequency of asset condition data (without increasing costs)

Offshore Wind Farm O&M

Emerging Trends in Offshore Wind

What is the Opportunity for Robotics and Autonomous Systems?

£70k/MW/yr

40GW

£2.7 bn/yr

30%

£800m/yr

Estimated cost of O&M

Installed UK capacity estimated by 2030

UK O&M market size estimated by 2030

O&M tasks potentially could be automated

Estimated market size for O&M RAS

Offshore wind opportunities and technology challenges

Targets:• Reduce the time spent offshore by vessels and technicians• Enable more efficient O&M of offshore assets

Operational Site Survey Cable O&M

Substructure O&M

Installation Monitoring

Preconstruction Surveys

• Further reduces the need for manned operations

Challenges

• How is this tested and verified?

• How is data returned to the users?

• How to plan the optimal route (not unique to autonomous systems)

• Power requirements

Autonomy

• Increases efficiency, allows charging of AUV in situ, eliminates need for support vessel

• Facilitating technologies required

• Power source

• Data transmission

Resident Systems

Modus Seabed Intervention & Osbit

Avision Project

• Vehicle recharging

• Upload of acquired data

• Downloading of new mission plans

• Trials in dry docks followed by offshore met mast

• The payload and toolset is a key differentiator for ROVs and AUVs

Soil Machine Dynamics

Anemoi Project

• Developing a method for detecting and following buried cables in an offshore wind farm

• Supporting with research to understand different failure mechanisms of array cables

• Trialling of methodology in simulated seabed dock with buried cable

Innovative Payloads

• Huge amount of work to watch and annotate ROV video streams

• Often just to advise actions on a few key findings

ROVCO

AUV3D Project

• Creating 3d visualisation models of assets

• Generating actionable information rather than hours and hours of video

• Iterative testing in docks to develop the 3d models

From Data to Knowledge

• Larger turbines

• Greater cost of downtime, each asset is becoming increasingly important

• Average turbine size installed:

• 2010 – 3.2 MW

• 2020 – 8.3 MW

• 2030 – 15 MW? 18 MW?

• Life extension

• As assets are ageing, lifetime extension considerations are becoming increasingly important

• Understanding foundation health is very important

• Reduce the need for more costly and higher-risk interventions, increase efficiencies

Conclusions and Key Trends

Contact us

ore.catapult.org.uk@orecatapult

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