Operations & maintenance
remote operation centres – essentially allowing for remote control of operations from the safety of land. This comes with its own challenges; remote long-range connectivity is yet to fully realise its potential, but developments in this area are already underway and will improve significantly in the short-to-medium term.
Put into practice
One such eROV platform is being developed by researchers from Heriot-Watt University and Imperial College London, working with the National Robotarium, the UK’s leading AI and robotics centre, in partnership with Fugro, a leading geo- data specialist. The Underwater Intervention for Offshore Renewable Energies (UNITE) project has received £1.4m in funding, partly from the UK’s Engineering and Physical Science Research Council, and seeks to remove the need for crewed support vessels during maintenance procedures. The UK has over 2,650 offshore wind turbines as of 2023, including those at Hornsea and Dogger Bank, with thousands more planned before 2050. Each turbine typically requires an average of up to three maintenance check-ups per year, which increases as turbines age and require higher levels of maintenance to stay fully operational. Traditional maintenance methods for offshore wind turbines require vessels to transport teams of trained divers and ship-based crews on-site to manually inspect individual turbines – or, more recently, to deploy remotely operated robots to conduct the inspection and repair processes. This all translates into hundreds of thousands of man-hours committed to crewed maintenance missions each year, which is ultimately inefficient, costly and environmentally unfriendly, all while presenting a safety risk to workers. The UNITE project is intended to support uncrewed and remotely operated vessels, developing autonomous and semi-autonomous eROVs capable of carrying out subsea inspection, maintenance and repair tasks – all while being deployed and controlled from an onshore site. Similarly, the project seeks to develop technologies to enable robots to create more accurate subsea terrain maps, while exploring how these robots autonomously interact with underwater structures during volatile conditions like changing currents or rough seas. “We’re only a generation away from our obligation to deliver on our net zero promises by 2050 and 2045 in Scotland, so can’t afford to let the challenges faced by the offshore renewables sector slow down the construction and operation of essential, green energy assets like wind turbines,” said Professor Yvan Petillot, academic co-lead at the National Robotarium and principal investigator of the UNITE project, in a June 2023 press release.
“Remote inspection and repair using robotic systems deployed in the field and controlled from shore is
World Wind Technology /
www.worldwind-technology.com
within our grasp. The long-term ambition is for crewless boats to be able to do this autonomously without direct human control based on a predetermined maintenance cycle – critical if we’re to see the widespread adoption of robotics in the rapidly expanding offshore wind sector.”
First fully remote inspection of an offshore windfarm In that same press release, Mark Bruce, global product manager at Fugro, made note of the potential that eROVs offer the offshore wind sector. “As the expansion and influence of marine robotics stretches ever further across the marine industry, we are committed to leading the industry’s remote and autonomous revolution,” he said. “Key to this is overcoming the challenges of remote operations by increasing our awareness and autonomy level in the sub-sea environment.”
Fugro, while part of the UNITE project, is developing a number of eROVs projects of its own. In April 2023, the company performed what it claimed as the first fully remote inspection of offshore windfarm facilities at the Aberdeen offshore wind farm in UK North Sea, also referred to as the European Offshore Wind Development Centre. Supported by funding from Vattenfall and the ORE Catapult, the survey involved one of Fugro’s Blue Essence USVs and a Blue Volta eROV. Designed to be able to stay out at sea for up to two weeks without the need for refuelling, the Blue Essence line was the first USV to receive approval from the UK’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) to operate fully remotely with an eROV during its inspection routine. The Blue Volta eROV, meanwhile, was successfully launched and recovered remotely from Fugro’s operations centre in Aberdeen. Inspecting wind turbine structures to assess their safety and stability, the vessel also carried a deepwater multibeam echosounder sensor on its hull, while enabled Fugro to collect data to generate a detailed map of the surrounding seabed. Beyond the work carried out by the National Robotorium and Fugro, similar eROV projects are also in works by groups like Oceaneering International and Saab Seaeye. Both offer robust and advanced ROV and eROV systems for offshore energy operations, focused on increased autonomy and enhanced data gathering and analysis while improving safety and reliability in demanding environments. Ultimately, all industry players are united under one belief: that current conditions at offshore wind turbines pose an unnecessary risk to workers, and that eROV technology is poised to take these tasks over. If they improve maintenance downtime while also being more cost-effective, then that just sweetens the deal. However, with more and more offshore turbines set for construction over the coming decades, those latter points may well prove just as enticing. ●
225
The number of high-potential incidents reported within the UK’s offshore wind sector in 2022. G+
2,652
The number of offshore wind turbines in the UK across 43 windfarms by the start of 2023, with thousands more planned by 2050. BBC
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