Episode 10: Offshore Wind's Mammoth Tasks

In this episode, we’re focussing upon the truly Mammoth Tasks that are involved in keeping the UK’s offshore wind farms going. We’re talking about inspecting, maintaining and repairing thousands of miles of subsea cables, millions of super-sized bolts and thousands of blades suspended above the ocean waves. This is heavy manual work, often undertaken in extreme conditions - fraught with risks, delays and heavy costs. Please note that due to COVID-19 we are recording episodes remotely which may affect the audio quality in some places. Peter Andrews founded EchoBolt in 2019 after many years managing offshore wind sites for E.ON, most recently the Rampion Offshore Wind Farm. EchoBolt provides a range of consultancy and engineering integrity services to the wind industry, including advanced inspection and condition monitoring techniques and data insights that enable optimum installation and maintenance decisions to increase production and reduce costs. He is currently partnering with ORE Catapult on a project to develop and test his novel concept for a handheld device for simplifying inspection of wind turbine bolts. Visit the echobolt.co.uk or follow @EchoBolt on LinkedIn. Chris Cieslak founded BladeBUG in 2014 with a mission to design an advanced robotic solution that could transform blade inspection and maintenance at offshore wind farms, reducing risk and maximising asset lifetimes. Under a grant from Innovate UK, Chris and his team are developing and trialling BladeBUG, a lightweight hexapod robot that can walk directly on wind turbine blades. The robot uses modular tools to scan and conduct preventative maintenance, without exposing human technicians to the harsh offshore conditions. BladeBUG is now on track for commercial production in early 2021. Visit bladebug.co.uk or follow @Bladebuglimited on Twitter and LinkedIn. Saul Matthews is Commercial Director at Glasgow-based technology developer Synaptec, which offers renewable energy providers a unique technology for measuring voltage, current, temperature, and vibration over vast distances, at many locations, without any supporting infrastructure. Before joining Synaptec as Commercial Director, Saul led growth for start-up and established brands in the IT, mobile, unified communications and most recently semi-conductor industries in every major global market. Heather McLarty joined the ORE Catapult in December 2018 as a Project Manager in the Research and Disruptive Innovation team. In her role, she delivers cutting edge technology projects in partnership with a range of technology developers. Before joining ORE Catapult, Heather was a Graduate Engineer at Scottish and Southern Energy Networks.