SeaRoc Tackles Cable Failure Risks

SeaRoc Group has upgraded its marine management and monitoring system, SeaPlanner, to help offshore wind developers and operators mitigate risks associated with subsea cable failures, recently identified as the main culprit for financial losses and project delays.

Subsea cable faults contributed to 77% of the financial losses of global offshore wind projects and led to insurance claims totalling more than EUR 60 million in 2015, 25% more than in 2014, according to a report by GCube Underwriting Ltd.

The cable issues can also delay the projects by 100 days or more, the report said.

The financial implications of this statistic can be reduced with improved quality control during cable laying, as well as continuous monitoring and the implementation of reliable data collection and analysis platforms, SeaRoc said.

With that in mind, the company has ”invested heavily’‘ in its SeaPlanner system designed to support offshore wind farm construction and O&M projects.

SeaPlanner integrates live data feeds from a variety of sources for a complete real-time view of site operations. Project data made available by SeaPlanner allows project teams to take proactive action to prevent incidents and potentially costly damages, the company says.

Recurring issues cause particular concern for the industry. SeaPlanner records data throughout the lifetime of a project including maintaining a log of all vessel and personnel movements across the site.

Having access to this data allows for lessons to be learnt, improvement of processes and introduction of project standardisation. Having a competent monitoring system in place also helps to secure funding and investment by being able to present, with evidence, progress on the project and demonstrate that risks are being effectively managed.

Dominic Stratton at SeaRoc Group said: “It is often the case that potential failures in high voltage subsea cables will not arise until later stages in the project. We have the ability to identify areas of potential concern at a much earlier stage with our cable management analysis services which allow our clients to detect at-risk cables through analysis of geophysical, geotechnical and engineering data. This solution has the added benefit of being suitable for integration with our SeaPlanner software, thereby providing access to complete site data, from a central interface.”