Innovation Exchange challenge: Autonomous Dynamic Cable Internal Inspection

The Innovation Exchange (iX) initiative is supporting the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult’s Floating Offshore Wind Centre of Excellence (FOW CoE) and its member companies in the offshore wind industry, to identify solutions to its innovation needs.

Floating offshore wind

Through the ScotWind leasing round, the UK recently committed to as much as 27.6GW (approximately 1500-3000 turbines) of new offshore wind generating capacity over the next decade, of which 17GW will be floating foundations. Additionally, the Celtic Sea leasing will provide an additional 4GW of floating wind capacity in England and Wales. Globally, the floating offshore wind market is expected to grow to 264GW of installed capacity by 2050 (DNV, 2023).

ORE Catapult Floating Offshore Wind Centre of Excellence

The Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult is the UK’s leading innovation centre for offshore wind. It is a membership organisation, hosting memberships to 19 key organisations from industry.  ORE Catapult’s unique facilities, research and engineering capabilities bring together industry and academia and drive innovation.

ORE Catapult has established the Floating Offshore Wind Centre of Excellence (FOW CoE) to develop an internationally recognised initiative to reduce the cost of energy from floating wind. The Centre will accelerate the build-out of floating farms, create opportunities for the UK supply chain, and drive innovations in manufacturing, installation and O&M.

Floating offshore wind turbine dynamic cable inspection and this challenge

Around one thousand dynamic power cables will be required to meet the needs of floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) installed in UK waters over the next decade. Dynamic cables have significant reliability challenges, and a large cost associated with unplanned failure. Subsea cables tend to fail most often due to mechanical faults, and the likelihood of this is expected to increase with dynamic cables. There is currently no commercially viable way to monitor and inspect the mechanical condition of the internal components of a dynamic cable. Existing external inspection methods based on ROV external inspection are expensive, can necessitate external cleaning and require a large vessel to be deployed to support the inspection campaign. Existing inspection methods are inhibited by the build-up of marine growth and the ability to inspect through the build up, or additional time and expense incurred to undertake a pre-clean of the inspected area.

While not limiting the technologies from solution providers, it is expected that solutions would consider innovations from some of the following areas:

• Aerospace
• Composite inspection
• Medical processes
• Rail infrastructure monitoring
• Built Environment monitoring
• Inspection systems

To meet the desired timescale and risks, it is preferred that the proposed solution, or the key part(s) of the solution, has been commercially proven in other sectors or within a test program which includes offshore conditions (for both installation and operation) trials.

Eligibility

Entrants to this competition must be:

• Established businesses, startups, SMEs or individual entrepreneurs
• UK based or have the intention to set up a UK base

Rewards & Benefits

Successful applicants will be given an opportunity to pitch to the Challenge Holder. At the discretion of the organisers of the competition, the package may also include:

• Support from the ORE Catapult or the Innovate UK Business Connect
• Support in the development of a prototype or pilot
• Technical support
• A place in Innovate UK Business Connect or ORE Catapult events
• A potential business collaboration
• Investor introductions (if investment is required)

For full functional and technical requirements, visit the Innovation Exchange site at the link below.