The UK has set ambitious targets to reach clean power by 2030 and, as this date gets closer, success rides, in part, on the widespread deployment of offshore wind.
But with the UK Government looking to quadruple offshore wind capacity over the next few years, there is a significant challenge in how to speed up the process of getting turbines in the water.
Due to their size and impact on the landscape (or seascape), offshore wind farms are required to go through pre-development planning and consenting applications ahead of construction – and it can take up to 10 years for a project to progress from concept to reality.
Much of this delay is caused by the consenting process that developers are obliged to navigate -which can take up to four years. To speed things up, ORE Catapult is actively looking at how smart digital technology and AI can fast track the consenting of new offshore wind farms, while protecting the natural environment.
In her report, Accelerating Offshore Wind: The role of innovative technology in decision making and faster consenting, ORE Catapult’s Environmental Specialist Dr Caroline Whalley writes that “uncertainties regarding the prediction of ecological effects mean that UK regulators often take a precautionary approach to consenting new developments.” However, the report concludes that planning consent could be reduced from four years to one, while continuing to protect the marine environment, if technology is more effectively utilised.”
One way to shorten consenting is to improve data collection and marine monitoring for environmental activities. Marine monitoring can be incredibly resource intensive, covering a wide range of sampling areas where data is collected manually by divers, or using in-situ water samples at fixed positions, before analysis in a laboratory. Because of this, there is often a time delay in reporting the environmental status of a site.
However, advances in technology such as remote sensing, machine learning techniques, acoustic monitoring and intelligent integration of modelling and sensor measurements could transform the environmental monitoring landscape and, in turn, the consenting process.
At ORE Catapult, we have several projects that are pursuing this technological revolution, including the development of smart sensors that carry out species monitoring using environmental DNA, to demonstrate the health and quantity of marine life. We are also supporting projects looking at radar and drones that can be used to accurately capture the impact on local wildlife by tracking their movements.
This summer, ORE Catapult unveiled a new virtual simulation platform – the first of its kind to harness live environmental data, at our flagship testing facility in Blyth. VDARE (Virtual Demonstration and Assessment for Robotic Environments) allows companies to test and accelerate the deployment of robotics in a range of offshore wind environments. The platform recreates wind, wave and sea conditions, and parameters such as wind speed and wave height – testing what robots can do within these environments at various stages in the development of an offshore wind farm. These robots could accelerate consenting as they enable efficient, scalable and minimally invasive environmental monitoring – especially in challenging marine environments. The robots can be comprehensively tested in VDARE before being deployed offshore to carry out the monitoring required.
One example comes from Frontier Robotics, an underwater robotics company based in Edinburgh, who have created a state-of-the-art camera that can be mounted onto a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to take true to life imagery of offshore wind turbines and floating offshore wind platforms. These images are then incorporated into ORE Catapult’s VDARE simulation to create virtually ‘real’ assets – to make the simulation as true to life as possible.
Through this work, we have also developed a cloud based intelligent data hub that brings together critical information for offshore wind consenting, from robotic observations to geological and environmental survey data. By integrating these diverse datasets into a unified platform, the hub empowers real-time decision-making and continuous environmental monitoring, significantly reducing delays and uncertainty. It also curbs duplication of effort by making high-quality data easily accessible and reusable across multiple projects. The data hub enables advanced AI tools to be embedded within it to analyse vast volumes of sensor and ecological data, uncovering patterns and generating insights that enhance predictive assessments.
In pre-construction surveys, where accurate data collection is critical, machine learning can support unmanned underwater vehicles adapt to changing sea conditions and weather patterns in real time, adjusting course and speed to maintain safety and optimise survey efficiency.
Devices such as buoys equipped with sensors for wind, waves and wildlife activity can provide continuous data that feeds into AI systems – evaluating factors such as wind consistency and impact on marine ecosystems and avian migration. This real-time monitoring allows immediate identification of potential environmental or logistical issues, enabling prompt adjustments to development plans.
But searching through the data can also be challenging, which is why ORE Catapult is supporting the ‘AI Knowledge Bot’ project, a way to process complex information faster and more efficiently. The Bot has been used to review operations and maintenance planning, but the same technology can be extended to accelerating the earlier consenting process by automating the extraction and analysis of critical information from large volumes of technical documentation.
This can be particularly valuable during the environmental impact assessment and regulatory approval stages, where clarity, consistency, and traceability of operational procedures are essential. The Bot can rapidly identify relevant content related to marine safety, mitigation measures, and compliance with environmental standards – reducing manual workload and the risk of oversight. By streamlining this process, developers can respond faster to regulatory queries and stakeholder concerns that come up as part of consenting.
The advent of AI provides huge opportunities for development of the offshore wind farms that will power our future. Despite over 20 years of experience constructing offshore wind farms in the UK, there is still a lack of data on the effects these installations can have on marine mammals, fish and birds. This knowledge gap has slowed down the whole process of consenting, and in turn the development of offshore wind farms. As wind farms grow in size and number, AI and robotics will assist at every stage of development, providing data that mitigates environmental impact. But by specifically targeting the area of consenting and harnessing the power of AI, our offshore wind powered future could get a lot closer, a lot faster.
