Viper Innovations wins offshore cabling honours

Viper Innovations, an engineering consultancy company that provides electrical monitoring and asset integrity solutions, has been announced as the winner of an Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult’s ‘Floating Offshore Wind Centre of Excellence’ competition. The challenge was organised and run in collaboration with Flotation Energy and Simply Blue Group, and was designed to find autonomous solutions that could inspect and identify monitoring defects in the dynamic cables on floating offshore wind turbines.

Viper Innovation’s success in the ORE (offshore renewable energy) challenge is largely based on its insulation protection, insulation monitoring, and mechanical condition assessment of dynamic cables. The company’s winning solution used technologies that included V-LIM and SSTDR, both of which were highly commended by the judging panel.

Viper took established technologies used elsewhere, like insulation monitoring and reflectometry, and adapted them in new ways specifically designed for offshore wind cables.

Rachel Nicholls-Lee, Flotation Energy Naval Architecture Technical Authority, said, “Innovation in floating offshore wind turbine dynamic cable inspection has many practical applications for floating offshore wind, and we were particularly impressed by Viper Innovations’ suggested solution.”

Daniel Denning, Viper Innovations Engineering Manager, said the company’s victory is part of a wider goal to make floating offshore wind farms more reliable at a time when the UK tries to achieve its energy transition goals.

Denning said, “Our journey through this initiative, part of the iX programme backed by ORE Catapult, highlights the importance of innovation in advancing floating offshore wind technologies.”

He said the UK is preparing “for the deployment of approximately 1,000 dynamic cables over the next decade” highlighting the scale of advancing autonomous inspection technologies. Offshore environments are often harsh, so the critical components of wind farms must be maintained effectively for reliability and safety.

ORE Catapult Dynamic Cable Strategic Programme Lead at ORE Catapult, Emily Sarveswaran spoke about the future of floating offshore wind farms. She said, “As the floating offshore wind sector moves toward commercialisation, condition monitoring of dynamic subsea cables is vital to ensuring long-term asset integrity and reducing operational risk.”

(Image source: “Rampion Wind Farm Construction Seen from Whitehawk Hill, Brighton, East Sussex, England, UK” by Dominic’s pics is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)