Innovation and entrepreneurship form part of our key values as a business, so earlier in the year we launched our inaugural ITPEnergised Chairperson’s Digital Innovation Award to seek great ideas from across the company that would help our clients to accelerate their net zero journeys. This was a company-wide competition across all sectors, services, grades and geographical locations to amplify these core values of innovation and entrepreneurship, spearhead creativity and cultivate team spirit.

The judging panel were blown away by some very creative high-quality ideas from teams across our key services in Technology, Advisory and Environmental Planning. The shortlisted teams presented their ideas to the entire company in June and the judging panel were faced with the extremely challenging task of picking the winner. After much deliberation, the award was won by Team Cabable, who impressed with their detailed proposal on dynamic cable rating optimisation. The tool will be developed internally and will support our clients in the offshore wind sector. 

The long-term sustainability of offshore wind development cabling is vital, as costs associated with replacing a damaged cable due to overheating likely to run into millions of pounds. Through accurate cable modelling, huge cost-efficiency can be achieved by ensuring that the number and size of cables used are exactly appropriate for the surrounding environment in which the cables are installed and the intermittent nature of wind generation and potentially severe weather conditions.

An alternative approach to the traditional Steady State analysis method of determining cable size is known as Dynamic Thermal Cable Rating, and uses digital tools to analyse historic weather and ocean data from the past 15 to 25 years from the location in which the offshore wind farm is planned. Real-life significant wind events from that time period are assessed for their strength as well as how long they went on for. This algorithmic tool also considers the detail of the soil or sand in which the cable is embedded and the burial conditions, in order to assess the time it will take to heat up.

Taking all these factors into account, the optimum cable size can then be determined. This is highly cost-efficient as often a smaller cable is advised with a significantly lower cost to the developer than would be recommended through the Steady State method. 

You can read more information on Cable Rating here.