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Offshore wind leaders urged to collaborate for radical advances to reduce subsea cable failures
reduce subsea cable failures. In a global industry first, Electrode will track cable failure trends and service downtime, as well as the effectiveness of current methods of monitoring, detection and response. Subsea cable failures account for the biggest insurance costs in the industry,
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and make up 75-80 per cent of claims in the UK. It can take an average of two months to repair a failed cable, costing more than £10 million in costs and lost power generation. To date, efforts to reduce failures have been hampered by a lack of available
data, but ORE Catapult, the UK’s leading technology innovation and research centre for offshore renewables, believes greater collaboration could pave the way for radical advances. It is calling upon the offshore wind industry to support the new Electrode
initiative, which will collect data anonymously, while allowing trend analysis to develop. The programme is being rolled out across Europe initially, with ambitions for it
to become a global benchmarking system for offshore wind cable failure in the near future. Funded through the Offshore Wind Innovation Hub (OWIH), Electrode has
launched with a workshop organised by ORE Catapult and the Carbon Trust. Ten offshore wind industry players are now signed up to the programme,
together with a major insurance group that covers offshore wind assets. It is being operated in a similar way to ORE Catapult’s SPARTA model. Charlotte Strang-Moran, Electrode Lead at ORE Catapult, said the programme
had the potential to be a game changer for the industry. “In order for us to make advancements in cable failure, we need to know what the common issues are and where improvements should be targeted,” she says. “Electrode will very quickly enable us to start identifying key and recurring
problems, which will bring huge benefits to the whole industry. The anonymous data will provide an accurate trend analysis, helping to accelerate innovation and improvements in reliability, which will reduce the costs of downtime, repairs and insurance.” Companies like Glasgow’s Synaptec, which has recently collaborated with ORE Catapult on commercialising its light-speed cable fault detection system Refase, will be able to leverage trend analysis for fresh innovations too. “The potential for the UK supply chain is enormous,” says Philip Orr, managing
director of Synaptec. “By removing the unknowns, Electrode will help the supply chain to identify where they can best develop and upgrade systems and procedures. The statistical data that Electrode provides will strengthen the business case for better condition monitoring. “As a result, our technology can support operators to reduce the risk and
causes of cable damage through accurate and detailed modeling of subsea cable performance.” ORE Catapult is now eager for other industry partners – especially wind farm
operators – to get involved, emphasising that anonymity and security of commercial data are two of the core principles of the platform.
shows and corporate
events.The venue construction company, V-Ex provides a virtual exhibition and conference platform that is currently being used for over 150 virtual events and experiences. Founder and CEO Roland Renshaw comments, “We needed an exhibition park style location online to host a number of co-located virtual trade shows. The V-EC is there now to service immediate demand, however we are also talking to the owners and operators of several iconic physical venues about building digital twins, so they can continue to service customers during lockdown and beyond.” The V-EC site offers over 200,000 m2 of exhibition floor space and
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has another 36,000 under construction (Hall #5). The first three large halls are already spoken for with Hall #1 being used to host an automation and general engineering show, IndustryExpo, which has seen over 250,000 visits since it opened in January 2020. With this level of visitor interest already established, the V-EC is
likely to attract more co-located trade shows and conferences as the industry adapts to offer an online alternative to physical events. While current Covid-19 restrictions are definitely fuelling demand, the platform has been developed continuously for the last ten years and has a large number of users taking advantage of its sustainability credentials, which, along with 24hr availability and visitor convenience, is long-term where a lot of its advantages lie. The launch of V-EC is significant for many reasons, not least that
it establishes the first large-scale exhibition and conference venue in the world to go on-line and be ready to host multiple events. Culturally there has been a seismic shift in the way people interact with the world outside and very much like the shopping, music, gaming and film industries, the move to online now seems inevitable for exhibitions and conferences. When live events do return, organisers will need to employ a
hybrid delivery format to ensure events remain successful. Using a platform such as V-Ex will make sure the event is scalable allowing physically hosted content to be streamed live alongside 3D exhibits and experiences that can be explored on-demand.
he V-Ex Virtual Exhibition Centre is now live at
www.V-EC.online offering a range of virtual venues ready for conferences, trade
he Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult is urging the offshore wind sector to sign up to a world-first data collection platform that aims to vastly
FULL SCALE VENUES OPEN FOR VIRTUAL EVENTS
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