Indeximate, a UK-based provider of fibre optic sensing technology for predictive maintenance of offshore wind subsea cables, has received a DNV Statement of Feasibility for its Scattersphere cable health monitoring platform, the company said on 3 December.
The platform was granted the Statement of Feasibility under the DNV-RP-A203 Technology Qualification framework, confirming the system’s technical feasibility for use on subsea power cables.
“Subsea power cables remain one of offshore wind’s most expensive sources of unplanned failure, with losses in the UK sector alone reaching more than £3.5 billion over the past 15 years. As offshore wind expands rapidly into deeper waters and harsher marine environments, independent assurance of monitoring technologies is increasingly critical for developers, transmission owners and their insurers”, Indeximate says.
According to the company, its Scattersphere platform leverages Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) on existing optical fibres embedded in subsea cables to continuously monitor cable behaviour, tracking signals such as vibration, strain, fatigue, movement and abrasion, and uses cloud-based analytics to convert the raw data into actionable insights about the structural health of cables.
Throughout the DNV process, the global certification body evaluated the concept, sensing principles, data-processing methods, system architecture and proposed operating parameters, and found them credible and suitable for further qualification and performance testing, Indeximate says.
“This Statement of Feasibility confirms that Scattersphere’s sensing principles, analytical methods and system architecture are technically feasible, and it provides a clear pathway towards full qualification,” said Dr Alastair Godfrey , Co-Founder and Director at Indeximate.
The Statement of Feasibility does not constitute a full Technology Certificate, the company noted, adding that it establishes that Scattersphere is technically feasible and ready to progress to the next stages of DNV’s qualification pathway. With this milestone passed, Scattersphere is now eligible to move on to the next qualification stages, which will include detailed validation and performance testing ahead of potential commercial deployment.