Researchers at the University of Limerick (UL) have pioneered a robotic solution for inspecting floating offshore wind farms.
A UL-developed remote-operated vehicle was successfully tested at Ocean Wind’s WindFloat Atlantic floater.
The results will help prepare for the challenges of maintaining these structures, the researchers said.
The intervention, repair and maintenance survey was carried out by a team from the Centre for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CRIS) at UL.
Regular inspections and maintenance are vital for offshore wind farms, whether bottom-fixed or floating, and currently these tasks rely heavily on human intervention.
The team used a fleet of field robots, subsea remotely operated vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles to survey the Ocean Winds’ WindFloat Atlantic off the coast of Portugal.
It offered the UL researchers a unique opportunity to perform the inspection tasks on a fully operational floating offshore wind farm, testing the technology in real-life conditions.
The survey yielded high-resolution, geo-referenced 3D models of structures above and below the waterline. The datasets and findings will be accessible through gold open-access articles and proceedings, benefiting the public, academia, and government.
UL CRIS co-director Daniel Toal said: “The significance of our research should be viewed in the context of Ireland’s existing offshore wind strategy, which aims to achieve 37GW of offshore renewable energy capacity by 2050.”
Professor Toal added: “This target also includes 6GW of floating offshore wind farms on the West Coast and plans for the Shannon Estuary.
“Achieving this goal requires the development of intervention, repair and maintenance capacities and capabilities to ensure offshore operations are efficient and cost-effective.”
The testing was conducted as part of the ATLANTIS project call for testing marine technology solutions for inspecting offshore wind structures and it was funded by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland Robots for Wind Farm project.
Ocean Winds, as the majority owner, developer and operator of the WindFloat Atlantic floating offshore wind farm, has been a key testing partner for the ATLANTIS project and a hub for innovative solutions and pilots.
MaREI, a Science Federation Ireland Centre for Energy Climate, Marine Research and Innovation, also supported the survey.
One of the challenges in inspecting a floating turbine is the movement of the structure, an effect that the UL team successfully minimised by using an adaptive control system for the remote-operated vehicle, as well as customised machine vision algorithms used in the image post-processing.