Proserv Controls has received industrial sponsorship from ScottishPower Renewables (SPR) for its disruptive subsea cable condition monitoring for the offshore wind segment, ECG™, or Electro Cable Guard. SPR is part of the ScottishPower group of companies operating in the UK under the Iberdrola Group, one of the world’s largest integrated utility companies and a leader in wind energy.
The sponsorship agreement will enable SPR to provide its expertise and resources both from a cable owner and operator perspective bringing important knowledge into the project to assist in the continuous development and final functionality of ECG. SPR's input will greatly help the future commercialisation of the system because of its close understanding of the key requirements of the industry across asset owners and developers.
ECG has been initiated and driven by Proserv with critical support from its consortium partners Synaptec, a power system monitoring leader, and cable engineering specialists BPP Cable Solutions. The system offers a paradigm shift in present market offerings around condition monitoring of both inter array and export cables.
The alliance adopted a holistic approach to build its solutions, combining distributed temperature, acoustic and electrical sensing, with synchronous, real-time monitoring and continuous automated data analysis of the entire asset. Machine learning will be integrated into the system, so that, once fully engaged, minute anomalies in performance, even within normal operating boundaries, will be detected, potentially indicating future issues requiring remedial action.
It is expected that the capabilities of ECG will lead to huge improvements in the management of submarine cables, significantly reducing the incidence of faults and failures on offshore wind farms in the future. Furthermore, as the ECG project moves forwards, it is anticipated that the technology will be demonstrated on a UK commercial scale wind farm in Q2/Q3 2022.
For more information please visit Proserv's website.