Beam me down: one company’s mission to reduce cost of offshore wind

“Piecemeal policymaking, supply chain issues and the rising workforce shortage have created hurdles in the green energy transition and fuelled a continued reliance on oil and gas. It’s never been more important to find ways to cut costs and project timelines.”

So says Brian Allen, a deep tech entrepreneur who specialises in survey and subsea technology to support offshore windfarm projects.

Allen made this statement back in September, after it was announced that two subsea businesses, Rovco and Vaarst – which he founded in 2016 and 2021 respectively – would merge under the new brand name of Beam to develop and deploy AI and autonomy enabled services in the offshore wind sector.

Beam’s mission, Allen added, is to deliver real world impact in the offshore wind industry by making it cost competitive with oil and gas “a pivotal step in ending the world’s dependence on fossil fuels.”

Against the tide

Wind farms are proving popular in governments’ energy strategies, given the falling costs of provision and the fact that turbines can be placed ever further out to sea.

But there are challenges. Traditionally offshore windfarm inspection involves dispatching large vessels which carry tethered, underwater robots (Remotely Operated Vehicles) which are used throughout the year to monitor turbines, the integrity of cables and other structures that connect to the seabed.

Firms like Beam are starting to address these issues by leveraging artificial Intelligence, 3D Vision and autonomous robotics. The Bristol-based company’s autonomous robotic solutions have been used in significant projects such as the Seagreen Wind Farm in Scotland, which is the largest offshore site in the country.

Scouting for bines

Beam’s latest capability, Scout, was unveiled at Web Summit in Lisbon earlier this month. Scout is a self-driving subsea robotic system that Beam claims will perform inspections autonomously, using AI and real-time 4K reconstructions and precise navigation to deliver inspections that are quicker and more cost effective.

Beam intends for Scout to be deployed directly by people working on crew transfer vessels during routine visits. This, Beam added, would allow a wider pool of people to manage the subsea maintenance of wind farms and their turbines, helping to alleviate the current offshore wind skills gap which may threaten the sector’s ability to scale.

Beam cofounder and executive VP of service innovation Joe Tidball told TechInformed. “Governments are pushing offshore wind as a viable energy source, but not enough people are involved. In the UK alone there are only 30,000 people in UK offshore wind industries and [for wind energy to be viable] we will need 100,000 by 2030. That’s 70,000 needed.

“Technologies like Scout and the AI processing of the data and us being able to get around these sites more quickly is vital to support the growth of wind as well,” he said.

A deep tech dive

According to Beam CTO Kari Dempsey, Scout is a culmination of many years of technical development. The underwater AV comprises of four key elements including Subslam, a perception system that works up to 6 KM under water and provides 3D reconstructions and stereo 4K video.

“This gives Scout the ability to see, essentially, and to create the 3D models that are critical for doing types of predictive analytics,” she explained.

A second element of Scout is an edge computing AI which gives the robotic vehicle the contextual understanding it needs to act independently.

The third element is sonar sensors and DVLs (the latter measure the speed and direction of UVs), which Dempsey said were important to ensure the inspection bot retained a holistic view while submerged.

 “One of the real challenges is visibility so even in a clear environment you can kick up sand from the floor and then you can’t see so you need a range of sensors,” she explained.

The fourth element of Scout, said Dempsey, was its autonomy algorithms – which were developed “in the wild” on previous projects over a four-year period.

“The algorithms we are using now can assess any kind of infrastructure without having any prior knowledge of it. This gives Scout the ability to navigate and map the environment that it’s in,” she added.

Scout and many of Beam’s other robots are controlled by Pathfinder, also developed by the tech firm, which is an AI-powered operating system that manages the navigation of robots without the need for human interaction.

The 3D, 4K video and other sensor data from Scout is processed using EdgeAI to collate the valuable information into smaller data packages. These packages are then uploaded to Beam’s ‘Vaantage’ data platform, where the required team members can access the information.

Digital twin

Speaking to TI at Web Summit, Tidball suggested that the data from Scout might be packaged into a digital twin 3D reconstruction of the environment which would help energy providers keep a closer eye on some of their smaller ‘problem child’ assets.

“If a windfarm has 100 assets, they may usually have six or seven ‘problem children’ that regularly have issues. Where Scout will operate is when the windfarm is up and running and turbines are spinning, and they are a business.

“Energy firms will want to spend as little money as possible maintaining their assets – but they will still need to maintain them at quite a high standard. It can cost a lot to bring in a large boat just to focus on smaller portion of the assets.

Scout – which is due to enter the market next year – will enable Beam’s customers to regularly go back in their own time frame, without a third-party crew. “We supply them with a smaller robot that they can deploy themselves,” he added.

According to Tidball, larger vessel projects using Beam’s technology typically happen that the beginning and the end of a windfarm’s life “and can run into millions.”

He claims that Scout’s AV reduces inspection time costs by “one or two orders of magnitude,” which suggests that the difference could range from 10 times to 100 times less than the traditional cost.

These calculations might seem vague. but for those interested on ROI for such projects, watch out for an independent report into windfarm technologies that is due to be published early next year.

Beam is currently operating in 19 countries and boasts over 90 customers worldwide, Tidball added. While the firm’s focus is on renewables, it also does end-of-life decommissioning for the Oil and Gas industry – Beam’s technology is useful for detecting assets and assessing their condition, some of which have been lying under the sea for more than half a century.

While the UK is the world leader in offshore wind, powering over 7.5m homes last year and becoming the nation’s main renewable energy source, Tidball says that growth in Europe is currently 3.5 times faster – and he added that Beam is set to open an office in in Germany next year.