The Carbon Trust’s Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA) has launched a competition to find ways to monitor subsea cables to ensure that they are not damaged during the load out and installation process.
“Current available solutions are not able to detect and monitor mechanical cable limits with the required accuracy,” OWA said.
Therefore, it is searching for new ideas from complementary industries, such as telecommunications, civil engineering, automotive and oil and gas, which could be adapted for subsea cable application.
OWA noted that out of £213m in insurance losses from 28 UK offshore wind claims between 2002 and 2015, 68% were directly due to cable faults occurring mainly during construction.
It said the development of 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”.
The Scottish government and the nine OWA partners will provide up to £225,000 to successful innovations and the concepts that show the most promise could receive further funding to take them to full-scale demonstration.
The nine industry partners in OWA are Dong Energy, EnBW, Eon, Iberdrola, Innogy, SSE, Statkraft, Statoil and Vattenfall.
Image: National Grid
Accelerator offers cable prize
Competition launched to find ways to monitor installation and load out
By EBS