Offshore Renewable energy Cable Health using Integrated Distributed Sensor Systems

Offshore renewable energy such as tidal, wave and offshore wind is an important part of the UK energy supply

and is becoming more so. However there are challenges when it comes to operating in an offshore or marine

environment. The cable infrastructure can be vulnerable to being dragged or worn. The transmission capacity

can limit the ammount of energy taken from a device or device array. Repair of offshore cables or

infrastructure is costly. This project seeks to investigate the feasibiity of combining two types of sensor

technology on a shared optical fibre network that can provide real time monitoring of electrical performance

and also the physical condition of a cable in a marine energy project. The proposed system would use pre-

existing optical fibre already on the installed power cable to opticallly interrogate electrical sensors and to also

perform as a dsitributed sensor The expected outcome from the project is a system level design with technical

and commercial development plan to fully exploit this technology.