Robots perform offshore wind farm inspection tasks
S. Himmelstein | September 16, 2024The inspection and maintenance of floating wind farms incurs high investments in terms of both monetary and human labor costs. Researchers at the University of Limerick, Ireland, may have devised an economical solution for meeting these offshore challenges: bring in the robots.
A fleet of subsea remotely operated vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles was successfully tested at WindFloat Atlantic, the world’s first semi-submersible floating offshore wind farm operated by Ocean Winds off Portugal. The power system features three platforms, each supporting one 8.4 MW Vestas turbine, anchored to the seabed with chains and connected to the onshore substation via a 20 km cable.
Adaptive control mechanisms enabled the robotic systems to minimize the logistics of surveying a constantly moving floating structure. The vehicles were also equipped with specialized machine vision algorithms for use in image post-processing.
The resulting high-resolution, geo-referenced 3D models of structures above and below the waterline will be included in publicly available datasets.
Professor Daniel Toal said: “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.
“Achieving this goal requires the development of intervention, repair and maintenance capacities and capabilities to ensure offshore operations are efficient and cost-effective.”