"Offshore wind power generation is subject to harsher environments than onshore wind, imposing greater challenges on the reliability of critical infrastructure. Of particular concern are subsea export and intra-array cables, failure of which can lead to significant loss of generation and repair costs. In offshore wind farms, such failures are reported to account for 75-80% of the total cost of insurance claims, while total cabling expenditure accounts for only around 9% of the capital cost of a new windfarm. Significantly enhanced protection and monitoring systems are required to ensure robustness of these key assets and minimise lost generation in the event of a fault, but no existing instrumentation solution provides the required visibility at low cost to implement such a system.

This project will deliver the required innovative solution, built around unique photonic sensor technology developed by UK SME Synaptec Ltd, enabling for the first time cost-effective distributed electrical instrumentation of offshore systems. The technology will enable robust differential protection schemes to be deployed on array cabling for immediate identification of the affected section in the event of a cable fault, significantly reducing associated generation downtime and loss-of-revenue. The wealth of information leveraged using this technology can further be used for harmonic measurements, which can be used to identify cable resonance conditions known to weaken insulation. Combined with compatible fibre-optic temperature measurement on known points of failure to detect hotspots, this would enable for the first time prediction of cable failure on an integrated platform, allowing swift contingency actions to be taken to reduce the risk of failure or plan ahead for repairs, enabling lifetime extension through targeted maintenance.

ORE Catapult will contribute engineering and market expertise, and enable Synaptec to test the subsea cable monitoring/protection platform developed in this project in a realistic environment on OREC's 7MW test turbine in Levenmouth, Fife. Logging of measurement and system data during the trial will allow the long-term stability of Synaptec's sensors installed in offshore environments to be assessed for the first time. Synaptec and OREC will examine this wealth of data to determine what ancillary information can be obtained beyond basic faulted cable detection functionality, e.g. power quality measurements and failure prognostics based on harmonic information. OREC will leverage its expertise in and contacts throughout the offshore renewables sector to produce a commercial case and organise stakeholder workshops to ensure the technology developed by this project accurately addresses the industry need."