Robotic Solution for Floating Wind Farm Inspection Tested at WindFloat Atlantic

July 31, 2024, by Adnan Memija

Researchers at the University of Limerick (UL) have developed a robotic solution for inspecting floating offshore wind farms, that was tested at Ocean Winds’ WindFloat Atlantic project in Viana do Castelo, Norte, Portugal.

With the aim of advancing the maintenance of floating structures, the UL researchers tested a remotely operated vehicle at WindFloat Atlantic, the world’s first semi-submersible floating offshore wind farm.

The intervention, repair, and maintenance survey was carried out by a team from the Centre for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CRIS) at UL.

Regular inspections and maintenance are said to be vital for offshore wind farms and currently, these tasks rely on human intervention. “However, with the industry’s growth and advancements, there is an increased emphasis on enhancing reliability and reducing operational costs,” the researchers state.

The researchers from the university, located in Ireland, used a fleet of field robots, subsea remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to survey Windfloat Atlantic off the coast of Portugal.

One of the challenges in inspecting a floating turbine is the movement of the structure, an effect that the UL team said they have minimised by using an adaptive control system for the remote-operated vehicle, as well as customised machine vision algorithms in the image post-processing.

According to the press release, the survey yielded high-resolution, geo-referenced 3D models of structures above and below the waterline. The datasets and findings will be accessible through gold open-access articles and proceedings.

“The significance of our research should be viewed in the context of Ireland’s existing offshore wind strategy, which aims to achieve 37 Gigawatts of offshore renewable energy capacity by 2050. This target also includes six Gigawatts of floating offshore wind farms on the West Coast and plans for the Shannon Estuary,” said Daniel Toal, Co-Director of UL CRIS.

“Achieving this goal requires the development of intervention, repair and maintenance capacities and capabilities to ensure offshore operations are efficient and cost-effective,” Professor Toal added.”

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The testing was conducted as part of the ATLANTIS project call for testing marine technology solutions for inspecting offshore wind structures and it was funded by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) Robots for Wind Farm project.

MaREI, a Science Federation Ireland (SFI) Centre for Energy Climate, Marine Research and Innovation, also supported the survey.

Fully commissioned in 2020, the WindFloat Atlantic floating offshore wind farm was developed by the Windplus consortium formed by Ocean Winds, a 50:50 joint venture between EDPR and ENGIE, Repsol, and Principle Power.

The project features three platforms, each supporting one 8.4 MW Vestas turbine, anchored to the seabed with chains and connected to the onshore substation in Viana do Castelo, Portugal, via a 20-kilometre cable.