The Cable Lifetime Monitoring Joint Industry Project (JIP CALM), a collaboration between over 30 international organisations, that aims to reduce subsea power cable failures and make offshore wind energy more reliable has been launched.
At present, failing subsea power cables are one of the main risks affecting offshore wind farm development and operations. These failures account for approximately 80% of insurance claims in the offshore wind industry.
Reducing the risk of subsea cable failure will make the offshore energy grid more reliable and give more control over the costs of the offshore cables throughout their lifetime.
The project was initiated by DNV-GL, TNO (ECN), BREM, VanDerHoekPhotonics and Deltares in collaboration with 30+ industry partners ranging from international suppliers to system integrators, end users and regulators.
Due to the wide range of partners, improvements will be made in the areas of the design, installation, operations and maintenance of subsea cables.
The consortium will create guidelines for transparent, industry-supported practice focusing on the main aspects of subsea cable systems and their failures.
The work will begin with a thorough analysis of the main causes of cable failures.
Another important topic covered by the study is the development of lifetime monitoring techniques.
“By continuously monitoring the cables from installation through to operation using optical fibres, we can establish a picture of why cables fail and develop an early warning system,” explained Jan-Joost Schouten , an offshore expert at Deltares.
In addition, the project partners will improve the predictions of morphological features such as sand waves around subsea cables and develop a decision support tool to quantify the achieved cost reductions for offshore wind energy.
The project will take two and a half years and it is being supported by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy through the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO).