The UK’s national Operations & Maintenance Centre of Excellence (OMCE) has partnered with offshore wind specialist Ørsted in a £400,000 project to develop an innovative approach to sea state forecasting.
It aims to deliver a significant reduction in missed working days.
Humber-based OMCE is a £2m collaboration between the University of Hull and the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult to drive innovation and improvements in operations and maintenance.
The project team, led by academics from the University of Hull, is working with Ørsted to help improve wave forecast modelling with direct industrial impact.
The model will contribute to improving the accuracy of sea state forecasting at an individual offshore wind turbine level.
A spokesman for the scheme explained: “Turbine accessibility is a key factor in a wind farm’s profitability. Technicians attempting to undertake maintenance can face a number of barriers to safe access, which in turn can be a factor in limiting turbine performance and ultimately overall energy output of a wind farm.”
“This new project will result in a wave forecasting model that will give greater accuracy and offer a more granular insight into the sea state within an offshore wind farm than current state-of-the-art methods can.”