Cable failures contribute to 77% of the financial losses of global offshore wind projects. This is evidenced by data reported by leading underwriter for renewable energy, Gcube. According to the report, insurance claims in 2015 exceeded €60 million in relation to incidents surrounding the installation and operation of high-voltage subsea cables – 25% higher than in 2014. The financial implications of this concerning statistic can be significantly reduced with improved quality control during cable laying, as well as continuous monitoring and the implementation of reliable data collection and analysis platforms.
SeaPlanner combines live data feeds from a variety of sources for a complete real-time view of site operations.
As the industry comes under increasing pressure to drive down costs, it is important for companies to address the issues that, according to the report by GCube, cause 100 days or more of unscheduled project delays and create substantial cost overruns.
SeaRoc Group recognizes that essential to achieving this is effective risk mitigation and has subsequently invested heavily in its marine management and monitoring system, SeaPlanner, which is designed to support offshore wind farm construction and O&M projects.
Dominic Stratton at SeaRoc Group says: “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.”
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.
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 standardization. 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.
Filed Under: Cables & connectors, News, Offshore wind
