Page 15: of Marine Technology Magazine (January 2021)

5 MINUTES WITH

DAN SUMNER, ORE CATAPULT

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As part of our Market Planner focus, we spoke with Dan

Sumner, Project Development Manager, at the UK’s Off- 0LFUR86%/7UDFNLQJ%HDFRQV %LGLUHFWLRQDO$FRXVWLF'DWD0RGHPV shore Renewable Energy Catapult (ORE Catapult) about his views on trends in the offshore wind market.

What is the overriding theme for What do you expect to see more of the subsea industry in 2021? in terms of technology?

It is well known that offshore wind is As the environment becomes more continuing its unprecedented growth extreme, we are seeing a trend to- across Europe, and the world. We wards more remote and autonomous have seen the levelized cost of en- technologies. Ways of working that ergy decrease faster than originally remove humans from danger and forecasted, a fantastic success story, provide reliable and repeatable data. which can be primarily attributed to We are seeing residency systems for the development of larger capacity subsea becoming viable, as well as a turbines and improving the economics range of technology being controlled of installation and operations per MW. from the shore. IoT and continuous 3RUWDEOH6LGHVFDQ6RQDUV 7RZHG2(0+XOODQG3ROH0RXQWHG

The growth of farm capacity, again monitoring technologies enable more improving the economics, such as predictive maintenance. the effectiveness of the transmission network. In general, we are moving What opportunities are there for further away from shore, met ocean new entrants? conditions on average will be more There can be an application of ma- severe (higher mean winds, greater chine Learning algorithms through all mean wave heights). Water depths will phases off the offshore wind lifecycle, increase, beyond the 50/60m range from site assessment at the develop- which transitions them into what the ment phase, to image classi? cation in industry experience as ‘deep’, seabed the operations phase, to environmental sediments become variable and an in- monitoring at decommissioning. The creased proximity to other offshore scale of predicted growth of offshore

ILQGRXWPRUH assets. wind should be an exciting prospect.

ZZZEOXHSULQWVXEVHDFRP www.marinetechnologynews.com

MTR #1 (1-17).indd 15 1/25/2021 10:13:11 AM