Northland Power has been a power producer managing and developing clean and green global power infrastructure assets worldwide. As a follow-up to the successful inspection at Nordsee One, a second trial was conducted at the Northland Power owned Deutsche Bucht offshore wind farm to prove BeeX’s Hovering Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (HAUV) A.IKANBILIS’ marine data acquisition competencies.
At German offshore wind farm Deutsche Bucht, BeeX’s Hovering Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (HAUV) A.IKANBILIS:
One clear pain point for Northland Power was the high costs required for crewed vessels and human data analysts to traditionally acquire marine data.
In addition, while ROVs are also commonly known in the marine industry, ROVs would require larger, expensive vessels for their deployments, raising operations and maintenance (O&M) costs.
Thus, Northland Power was in search of new technologies; these would need to support the cost-effectiveness of inspection and maintenance processes of their offshore wind farms.
To explore the capabilities of newer technologies, BeeX’s HAUV A.IKANBILIS was commissioned at Deutsche Bucht offshore wind farm. BeeX’s scope of work included inspecting wind turbine generators, offshore substations, inter-array cables, cathodic protection systems, and cable protection systems.
BeeX did away with large expensive vessels that needed to be connected to tethered work-class ROVs that typically weigh 1 tonne. From a crane on one offshore wind turbine, the HAUV, weighing 75kg at most, was lowered into the waters and proceeded to conduct inspections, as tasked.
BeeX’s HAUV worked alongside an Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) of Subsea Europe Services. The USV was to take care of multibeam surveying while the HAUV was to inspect scour and marine growth of the monopile.
With a mix of inspection techniques of Close Visual Inspection (CVI), Image Mosaicking, and 3D sonar visualisations, A.IKANBILIS demonstrated capabilities not found in similar-sized standard ROVs. The HAUV showcased computer-controlled flights, integrated sensor data, and real-time visualization.
As previously observed by Northland Power at Nordsee One, A.IKANBILIS displayed its current-fighting abilities in challenging waters and continued operations uninterrupted.
High-quality stabilized imagery and visualizations were sent to its own data reporting software clouds, namely Sambal UI and Sambal Portal. Gathered data fit standards of BSH, Germany’s Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency, receiving Northland Power’s approval.
The usage of the HAUV gathered superior data and exponentially reduced high deployment costs compared to ROVs–a truly economical solution!
Given that A.IKANBILIS surpassed the underwater capabilities of traditional ROVs, the technology challenges the prevalent use of ROVs solutions in underwater inspections. This makes the HAUV a sensible solution for offshore wind farm operators and O&M personnel looking to obtain advanced subsurface data for secure offshore operations.
At the heart of it, the state-of-the-art HAUV A.IKANBILIS bridges quality and industry profitability, revolutionizing underwater inspections.
