Offshore wind farms are a promising source of renewable energy. Salt water, however, creates a new set of challenges for wind turbines, including increased corrosion damage.

Moreover, offshore wind farms are exposed to harsh conditions, increasing the risk for equipment failures from excessive movement, loads or temperatures.

To prevent equipment failure, regularly scheduled maintenance is essential. Equipment, however, could fail earlier than projected or could continue to function well beyond the planned replacement. This makes offshore wind maintenance resource-intensive and increases the levelised cost of energy.

SMS Guard™, by 4Subsea, is a simple-to-install set of autonomous sensors. The sensors monitor floating and bottom-fixed offshore wind substructures, detecting anomalies in turbines, towers, substructures and seabed support. Because the sensors are retrofittable, they can be installed in both existing and new projects.

4insight® Offshore Wind is a complementary software, which interprets data from the sensors, as well as weather information and other input. The data is analysed to provide live integrity monitoring of offshore wind structures, providing operators with a full overview of structural loads and movements. All data is available through an open API, enabling cloud computing and collaborative data analytics.

4Subsea supplies key decision support for wind farm operators. By using a digital twin of the real-life offshore structures, operators can predict any harmful outcomes and resolve issues preventatively, maximising the lifetime of assets, predicting asset repair or replacement, and minimising production downtime.

With the 4Subsea data, wind farm operators can make better key decisions, avoid production loss, and reduce costs. In addition, the data gathered from turbines today can optimise the design of future wind turbines.

The global renewable energy market is experiencing significant growth due to rising energy demands combined with increased needs for clean energy. The offshore wind market is expected to grow from an estimated USD 27 billion in 2017 to USD 55 billion by 2022.

Currently, offshore wind operators are lagging behind other parts of the energy sector when it comes to realising the potential of digital technologies. This, however, is expected to change, with steady growth in digitalisation of offshore wind projected over the coming years.

4Subsea has delivered digital decision support with digital twins to the oil and gas industry for years.