Latest news with #ORECatapult
Business Wire
25-07-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
Viper Innovations: Proud Winners of the Autonomous Dynamic Cable Inspection Competition
PORTISHEAD, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Viper Innovations has been selected as the winner of an Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult's Floating Offshore Wind Centre of Excellence challenge, delivered in partnership with Flotation Energy and Simply Blue Group, to identify autonomous floating offshore wind turbine dynamic cable inspection solutions. The challenge was delivered through the Innovate UK Innovation Exchange (iX) programme. Viper Innovations has won a significant industry challenge for its dynamic cable monitoring technology, advancing reliability in floating offshore wind. Backed by Innovate UK and led by ORE Catapult with Flotation Energy and Simply Blue Group. The purpose of the competition was to identify innovative solutions for monitoring defects inside dynamic cables on floating offshore wind farms. Viper Innovations' entry builds upon their record of providing electrical monitoring and asset integrity solutions for a broad range of applications and industries. Daniel Denning, Viper Innovations Engineering Manager, 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. As the UK prepares for the deployment of approximately 1,000 dynamic cables over the next decade, Viper Innovations is proud to be at the forefront of delivering the solutions needed to improve reliability and accelerate the energy transition. 'We look forward to building on this success and continuing to work closely with Flotation Energy and the Floating Offshore Wind Centre of Excellence to support the future of offshore renewable energy – to push Dynamic Cable Condition Monitoring (DCCM) into its next phase, helping the sector overcome the challenges on the dynamic cable.' Emily Sarveswaran, ORE Catapult Dynamic Cable Strategic Programme Lead at ORE Catapult, said: "At ORE Catapult's Floating Offshore Wind Centre of Excellence, we were pleased to support Viper Innovations through the Innovation Exchange (iX) challenge. 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. We look forward to continuing our support for Viper Innovations and the development of their solution." Viper Innovations' focus on insulation monitoring, insulation protection, and mechanical condition assessment for dynamic cables was particularly commended as addressing a critical and currently underserved need in the floating offshore wind sector. The winning solution from Viper Innovations, leveraging advanced technologies such as SSTDR and V-LIM, received excellent feedback from the judging panel. They recognised their expertise, the strong suitability of the technology to the challenge, and the innovative adaptation of proven insulation monitoring and reflectometry techniques from other industries, including subsea oil and gas. Rachel Nicholls-Lee, Flotation Energy Naval Architecture Technical Authority, said: 'Flotation Energy was delighted to partner with ORE Catapult in this challenge, supported by Innovate UK's Innovation Exchange (iX) programme. 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. We look forward to supporting them as they continue to develop this technology.' About the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult ORE Catapult is the UK's leading innovation centre for offshore renewable energy, established in 2013 by the UK Government as part of a network of Catapults set up by Innovate UK in high growth industries. Independent and trusted, with a unique combination of world-leading test and demonstration facilities, engineering and research expertise, ORE Catapult convenes the sector, delivering applied research, accelerating technology development, reducing risk and cost and enhancing UK-wide economic growth.
Business News Wales
10-07-2025
- Business
- Business News Wales
Offshore Renewables Supply Chain Programme To Launch in South Wales
A dedicated regional programme aimed at supporting the floating offshore wind supply chain is set to launch in South-West Wales. The regional programme will run for up to 18 months and will be delivered by the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult's Fit For Offshore Renewables programme (F4OR). F4OR supports the development of an increasingly competent, capable and competitive UK offshore renewable energy supply chain. It is focused on helping UK supply chain companies gain the tools needed to succeed in the offshore renewable energy sector. The Crown Estate will provide ORE Catapult with £100,000 in funding to work with businesses in the Swansea Bay City Region, supporting their growth and entry into the floating offshore wind supply chain. This financial contribution will be matched by the Swansea Bay City Deal, which is co-funded by the Welsh and UK Governments, and launched a previous F4OR scheme in the region. From the end of July, Expressions of Interest in the new scheme can be submitted by businesses through the ORE Catapult website and successful businesses will be judged against a set of relevant criteria, including their commitment to expanding their footprint in the floating offshore wind supply chain and alignment with the ambitions set out in the Celtic Sea Blueprint. The programme was announced during an event hosted by The Crown Estate in the Senedd in Cardiff, where Members joined local authorities, industry partners, community groups and skills organisations to showcase the collaborative working taking place on its projects and activities across Wales. The Crown Estate's Chief Executive Dan Labbad attended alongside Senedd Members, where the organisation presented its Wales Review to outline positive impact and future opportunities from its activities across the country. The funding for this scheme is in addition to The Crown Estate's recently announced proposal to invest up to £400 million of capital into the UK's offshore wind supply chain. Some of this funding is already being deployed in Wales through its £50 million Supply Chain Accelerator, supporting organisations including Neath Port Talbot Group of Colleges, Pembrokeshire College and Marine Power Systems Ltd. Rebecca Williams, Director, Devolved Nations at The Crown Estate, said: 'Having the opportunity to showcase and celebrate the individuals and collaboration involved in The Crown Estate's work across Wales in the Senedd was fantastic, and we're grateful to the Members who supported our event. It's inspiring to bring together so many valued partners who are helping us to serve communities and businesses across Wales, now and into the future. 'SMEs are a core driver of Wales's economy. The F4OR scheme with ORE Catapult will help businesses in South Wales take advantage of the many opportunities presented by the development of a new floating offshore wind industry in the Celtic Sea. Through a thriving supply chain, we can create jobs, skills and play an important role in the clean energy transition.' Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Energy and Planning, Rebecca Evans, said: 'Floating offshore wind in the Celtic Sea represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver lasting economic and social value for Wales. 'Working in partnership with the Crown Estate and others, we are determined to ensure Wales is in the best possible position to reap the rewards from the renewable energy revolution. 'This important programme will support local companies bidding for work in the floating offshore wind industry. This will help improve the awareness of Welsh firms about what is required to do business in the offshore wind sector.' Andy Macdonald, Director – Development & Operations, ORE Catapult, said: 'South Wales has an enviable reputation for engineering and manufacturing excellence, coupled with huge potential to support the growth and expansion of floating offshore wind. The Fit for Offshore Renewables (F4OR) supply chain programme provides an ideal route for companies with the right combination of key skills, expertise and leadership to make the transition to the renewable energy sector. 'As we see the Celtic Sea becoming an increasingly important location for floating wind development, the opportunity for local innovative companies to tap into the huge economic potential is clear, and this support is specifically designed to help those companies turn potential into reality.' This announcement follows the news in June that Equinor and Gwynt Glas – a joint venture between EDF Renewables UK and ESB – had been selected as preferred bidders to take forward two new floating wind farms as part of The Crown Estate's Offshore Wind Leasing Round 5 in the Celtic Sea. Launched at the start of 2024, a core focus of Round 5 has been to open up a new region of the UK for the generation of more secure, clean energy, while kick-starting the development of a new industry and supply chain around the Celtic Sea. The Crown Estate's Celtic Sea Blueprint published last year showed that Round 5 could support the creation of 5,300 new jobs and deliver a £1.4 billion boost to the UK economy.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Size matters: Why the offshore wind industry is supersizing everything
In a cavernous testing facility on England's windswept northeast coast, engineers are dropping a 50-ton multi-million dollar wind turbine blade the size of a football field onto a concrete floor—on purpose. The blade is being tested to destruction at the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult (ORE Catapult) in Blyth. It tells one small part of the story of the energy transition. This is the facility that tested General Electric's massive Haliade-X wind turbine—part of a new generation of supersized turbines that are transforming the economics of clean energy. Right now, almost 200 of these behemoths are being deployed at Dogger Bank, 100 miles out to sea. On completion, it will be the largest wind farm in the world, capable of powering 6 million homes. It's the job of ORE Catapult to make sure such machines—each an expensive investment in its own right—won't be blasted to smithereens by the North Sea's violent storms. 'Our role is to try and make the testing as representative as possible to the real world,' says Matthew Hadden, ORE Catapult's chief engineer. 'We want to see failures in a test environment rather than 180 miles offshore where it's'—he pauses —'costly and environmentally dangerous.' The race to build ever-larger wind turbines speaks to both the promise and challenge of the renewable energy revolution. At its core, this supersizing of everything is a calculation driven by simple physics: bigger, taller turbines take advantage of higher wind speeds, generating more electricity per rotation. When ORE Catapult opened, turbines were a fraction of their current size. Today, at 138 meters (453 feet) tall, GE's 13-megawatt (MW) Haliade-X is one of the largest turbines in service. Yet, in years to come, even this giant looks set to be dwarfed. In 2024, China's Dongfang Electric Corporation announced a 26 MW monster that towers over the Haliade-X, with a single unit capable, the company claims, of powering 55,000 homes. This scaling up of everything is why, thanks to a $115 million investment, ORE Catapult is building a hall that will be able to accommodate blades of up to 180 meters in length. A new drivetrain testing facility will be able to test systems of up to 28 MW—far more power than any currently deployed wind turbine can generate. Yet no one in Blyth seems to be betting against turbines going even larger than that, with one project manager telling me, 'honestly, no one really knows.' While this scaling up has transformed the economics of wind power, it also presents new engineering and logistical hurdles—all of which must be overcome if the U.K., Europe, and the wider world are to move away from burning the fossil fuels that are causing climate change. At its core, ORE Catapult is a not-for-profit facility that tests the equipment that makes offshore wind possible, from turbine blades and power cables to underwater drones. Set up in 2013 as one of nine centers by UK Research and Innovation, a public body, the facility is intended to bridge the gap between research and industry to help firms bring new tech to market. "Our ambition is achieving net zero, creating the opportunity for economic growth, and increasingly energy security,' says Tony Quinn, ORE Catapult's outgoing director of technology development. 'The fact that we're working with the whole value chain means we're helping SMEs who've got bright, innovative, disruptive ideas. Their technology might not currently be up to commercial readiness, but even if we just nudge them along the journey, it helps them create value.' For Quinn, an engineering veteran who started his career as an engineer at Drax coal-fired power station in the 1980s, the rise of offshore wind represents more than just clean energy—it's the story of a new industrial revolution. "We flipped the nuclear agenda because of the rapid cost reduction driven by larger turbines coming to market in much shorter time periods than people envisaged," Quinn explains. "We played a role in that cost reduction by helping Haliade-X come to market." Quinn has had a career that embodies Britain's energy transition, having traveled from coal power to gas generation to offshore wind over four decades. But in his view, ORE Catapult's role in developing cutting-edge tech doesn't just help the country achieve its climate targets: it pays dividends throughout society, building the supply chains, the knowhow and the jobs of the future, while heading off strategic risks by enabling the country to become energy independent. 'We're one of the few places that is generating technical competence in the core technology, and also making sure the technology that is deployed is as reliable as possible,' Quinn tells me. 'So we're playing an important role in that energy security agenda.' In the grand scheme of things, such competencies have long-term geopolitical implications. That's because, as energy systems research by groups such as RMI and IPPR has shown, while a few key states control the flow of fossil fuels, many countries have access to abundant wind and solar resources—they simply need a way to capture that energy. And countries that can contribute to the global supply chain for green products will position themselves at a significant comparative advantage over those that cannot. This is why both Britain and the EU regard offshore wind energy as a key pillar of their energy future. In April, European wind industry leaders, including Denmark's Ørsted, Germany's RWE and Sweden's Vattenfall, called on European governments to build a new 'offshore wind deal' by auctioning 100 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind capacity between 2031-2040. The firms said the proposal would strengthen Europe's energy security and industrial competitiveness while cutting emissions; in exchange, they would commit to reducing electricity costs up to 30% by 2040 and invest in European manufacturing and community development. The growth of turbines, it turns out, will be key to this delivery. Damien Zachlod, managing director of German energy company EnBW, explains. "If we can increase the capacity of wind turbines, then we have a chance to grow with economies of scale,' Zachlod tells me. 'If they can bring down the per-turbine costs, that can obviously pass through to cost-out." And indeed, that's already happening. EnBW's He Dreiht offshore wind project, under construction in the German North Sea, will be one of Europe's first subsidy-free wind farms, thanks to its 64 giant, 15 MW Vestas turbines. "It's being delivered on a zero-cent basis," Zachlod says, "which means these 15 MW turbines have enabled us to reach a point where we can deliver a zero-subsidy project." Yet despite these breakthroughs, wind power is still not traveling at the speed needed to deliver the energy transition that the world needs. In 2024, the U.K.'s incoming Labour government announced its Clean Power 2030 strategy, which stipulates renewables must make up 95% of the country's electricity generation by the end of the decade. In the plan, the government states that offshore wind has 'a particularly important role as the backbone of the clean power system.' That's a lot of pressure given that, at present, offshore wind delivers only 17% of the country's electricity generation, with 14.8 GW of offshore wind in operation, and a further 16 GW capacity in the pipeline. Yet Clean Power 2030 directs that as much as 51 GW needs to be installed by 2030—meaning that the country's offshore wind fleet will need to more than triple in size in just four years. 'What Clean Power 2030 does is to put a huge onus on offshore wind to deliver, in a relatively short time,' Tony Quinn tells me. 'Almost the greatest threat to that is our failure to deliver.' Unfortunately, both the U.K. and Europe face a range of bottlenecks in deploying renewables fast enough to get where they want to be. In a report released this week, Offshore Energies UK, which represents hundreds of firms involved in the sector, warned that the U.K. would fail to meet its targets if it didn't take action to address price inflation, capital costs and supply chain issues. Now, paradoxically, the enormous size of wind turbines is itself creating some of those bottlenecks. Caroline Lytton, Chief Operating Officer at Oxford's Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, says that while bigger turbines offer "efficiencies of installation," they require specialized—and supersized—infrastructure. 'You're going to need a bigger boat,' Lytton tells me, recalling Spielberg's Jaws. Right now, she explains, there aren't enough ships of sufficient size to install turbines as quickly as they're needed: 'The turbines are scaling quicker than shipbuilders can keep up with.' Furthermore, Lytton points out that, as turbines get bigger and bigger, they can no longer be transported by road, and require expanded port infrastructure. 'We're having to dismantle roundabouts so blades can be transported around them,' she notes. In Europe and the U.K., where there's limited money and limited space, and where big projects need consent and approval, that creates further bottlenecks. From this point of view, China faces fewer constraints. 'China's doing this pretty well because they have the capacity and the money and a government who is not afraid to say 'clear this space,'' she adds. Tony Quinn sums up today's challenge: 'There's no shortage of competition amongst project developers, but there's a disconnect when it comes to supply chain capacity and readiness to deliver against that ambition. If it takes longer or it costs more than expected, other competing technologies will be needed and you'll get more of a portfolio approach.' With an ongoing bitter political debate in the U.K. around net zero, Clean Power 2030 can ill afford to fail. Yet, regardless of the political fallout, offshore wind, with the economic and strategic benefits it confers, will continue its march across the North Sea. And while ORE Catapult can't solve immediate supply chain bottlenecks or instantly expand port infrastructure, its role in de-risking new technologies and validating their commercial viability has proved instrumental in accelerating the UK's energy transition. "What ORE Catapult brings is the ability to prove the business case," Lytton explains. "When you can demonstrate that a technology works reliably at scale, you remove a huge barrier to investment." Damien Zachlod agrees. 'There's lots of developer groups, there's lots of trade bodies, but what ORE Catapult has is the ability to bring particular parts of the supply chain together with customers to test and de-risk projects," he says. Such collaboration, he believes, is crucial not just for technology development, but for creating the jobs of tomorrow: "If the skills are here and if the intelligence and the knowledge is here, then you have an opportunity to try and get more jobs here." This ability to build confidence in new technologies, combined with its role in fostering collaboration across the supply chain, makes this British energy secret weapon a quiet but crucial player in the path to net zero. The question isn't whether wind power will transform our energy landscape—it's whether facilities like ORE Catapult can enable it to happen fast enough to meet the urgent demands of our changing climate. This story was originally featured on
