Proserv partners with complementary, emerging technology companies to create compelling solutions for customers. These relationships enable Proserv to be at the forefront of technology advancement as we continue to identify innovate ways to create value for our customers throughout the energy transition.

Cable failures are a critical concern – every offshore wind farm is likely to experience an outage at some point, and repairs are both expensive and time-consuming. A typical export cable failure costs more than £12m, and takes more than two months, to fix.

In 2019, a detailed FEED study undertaken by the team at controls technology company Proserv examined the technical basis for the future generation of a solution for subsea cable monitoring. At the same time, a market report identified its possible benefits to the offshore wind industry, including the nature of cable failures that the solution might ultimately detect and predict. These insights highlighted the need and demand for the innovation of a cable monitoring system that could identify anomalies in cable performance at offshore wind farms, before faults occurred.

This critical industry challenge drove Proserv to develop a new product offering for offshore wind, through leading a collaborative technology consortium. This consortium constituted the power monitoring capabilities of Synaptec, a spin-out from Strathclyde University, alongside BPP Cable Solutions, specialists in subsea power cable engineering and management. The Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult gave key support to the group in the initial phases of the solution’s emergence.

The collaboration led to the creation of a successful product, the ECG™ holistic cable monitoring system, to which ScottishPower Renewables and Equinor have provided industrial sponsorship. In 2022, Proserv’s ECG™ system secured its first contract to monitor inter-array cables on phases A and B of Dogger Bank Wind Farm – among the World’s largest. The technology will be utilised in 2024 on export and inter-array cables at Hywind Scotland floating wind farm – the first of its kind in the World.

The product has come about from shared expertise gained in the wider energy sector and offshore renewables, as well as from power system monitoring, electronics, engineering, data analytics and software development. Its emergence speaks not only to the power of collaboration but the positive impact of support funding and industrial sponsorship.