General – Met-ocean Measurement
Ørsted, the world’s leading developer of offshore wind farms, has designed and developed the first uncrewed surface vessel (USV) in the industry for offshore met-ocean measurement campaigns.
The measurement data will help lower uncertainties in the expected annual energy production for new offshore wind farms.
Ørsted, who has patented the USV concept, sees enormous potential in the technology and has initiated a serial production based on their successful prototype USV.
The prototype USV is named Hugin USV. It is designed for continuous operation in the harshest offshore conditions for a year at a time. The USV has a built-in navigation system, which enables it to transit from shore at various degrees of autonomy, and it can be controlled both in line-of-sight or from a beyond-line-of-sight remote control centre.
The USV is designed as a generic sensor platform and can collect large amounts of data on, among other things, the wind conditions, the state of the seabed, and biological and ecological measurements, all dependent on the sensor instrumentation chosen for a given operation. The broad range of measurements collected by the USV is essential for Ørsted’s early-phase development activities prior to the construction of new wind farms.
