Carbon Trust TLM

Project Description

Array Cable Through Life Monitoring is a joint industry-academia project supported by the Carbon Trust. Project Parteners are JDR Cables, University of Hull, Heriott Watt University, the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult and Xero Energy. The project will address challenges presented to the offshore wind industry regarding mobile sediment transfer present risk to cable infrastructure through increased environmental loading in the case of exposed lengths, and potential thermal restrictions in the case of additional sand wave burial. These risks are typically mitigated through costly routine vessel survey monitoring. The aim of this project is to assess the viability of the existing and emerging technologies that could contribute to reducing the cost of this risk mitigation, in compliance with current practices and standards. The project will seek to test the validity of distributed temperature sensing (DTS) systems as a means of identifying and quantifying burial of cables through testing and analysis, and to determine the cost benefit of such systems in reducing the cost and frequency of surveys. Further, providing an assessment of technology readiness of solutions under development that could further reduce the routine monitoring costs through alternative methods of survey.