Subsea Europe Services utilizes USVs, AUVs at Deutsche Bucht offshore wind farm

Offshore staff

HAMBURG, Germany – Northland Power and Subsea Europe Services (SES) have concluded a pilot project to apply uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to marine survey and underwater inspection operations at the Deutsche Bucht Offshore Wind Farm in the German North Sea.

The July 2023 project was commissioned to verify performance and further develop the operational workflows of SES’ Autonomous Surveyor USV for multibeam surveying and A.IKANBILIS Hovering AUV (HAUV) for subsea inspections such as scour and marine growth surveys, when deployed from a service operations vessel (SOV) mothership already resident for operations and maintenance (O&M) at the wind farm.

SES says the so-called "mothership concept" was proven successful throughout the pilot, with seamless integration of the various teams and equipment working aboard the Albert Betz SOV resulting in a wider weather window for marine survey and underwater inspection operations, with launch and recovery up to Sea State 3 and data acquisition according to the specified requirements.

“Our goal is to utilize assets that are already in place within the offshore wind farm O&M framework in order to improve the availability of marine data and significantly reduce the cost of acquiring it,” said SES CEO Sören Themann. “Both Autonomous Surveyor and A.IKANBILIS performed well, acquiring actionable data within similar time frames as conventional vehicles including crewed survey vessels and work class ROVs, both of which are more costly to manage and operate.”

While SES says it will continue to fine tune and further automate workflows based on the experiences of the pilot project, both Autonomous Surveyor and A.IKANBILIS are available for offshore wind farm deployment now. Full commercial readiness of a combined turnkey USV/HAUV for major projects and permanent mothership deployment is expected by first-quarter 2024.

Northland Power is 100% owner of Deutsche Bucht offshore wind farm, which is located 95 km west of Borkum in the German Exclusive Economic Zone. Deutsche Bucht has an operating capacity of 252 MW. 

08.24.2023