How May Robots Restrict The Environmental Affect Of Offshore Wind Farms – Watts Up With That?
Wind turbines require frequent maintenance – a task that can pose a hazard to human operators and create a significant carbon footprint. Peter Dargatz / Pixabay
David Flynn, Heriot Watt University
Spending on global offshore renewable energy infrastructure is projected to exceed $ 16 billion (£ 11.3 billion) over the next decade. This includes creating an additional 2.5 million kilometers of global submarine cables by 2030.
In order to lay and secure these cables against ocean currents, the ocean floor must be plowed and stones and concrete mattresses disposed of to serve as the base for the cables – practices that severely disrupt the marine ecosystem that so many creatures call home.
Offshore wind farm installation requires many such highly effective practices, often with little consideration of their impact on the balanced marine environment – which over 3 billion people rely on for food and livelihoods.
Human activities, including building renewable energy infrastructure, have affected over 40% of the ocean’s surface, creating oxygen zones in dead oceans devoid of oxygen, algal blooms that damage marine species, and devastating loss of biodiversity.
If we continue down this path, there is a risk that the predicted green tech revolution will cause unprecedented damage to the world’s oceans. The new generation of renewable energy producers need to assess their long-term impact on the marine environment to assess how sustainable their supply chains and practices actually are.
As the United Nations Decade of Ocean Resilience begins this year, the role that autonomous technologies can play in supporting the marine environment continues to be recognized. We cannot expect to implement sustainable technology without first adopting environmentally conscious practices in the field of renewable energy ourselves. This is where robotics comes in.
The cost of maintenance
Roughly 80% of the cost of maintaining offshore wind farms comes from sending people to perform inspections and repairs by helicopter, maintaining support vehicles such as boats, and building offshore platforms to house turbine workers. All of this leads to CO2 emissions. In addition, offshore inspectors have to work at risky heights and in confined spaces, both of which are dangerous.
Maintenance of the turbine is expensive, dangerous and not environmentally friendly. Anette Bjerg / Pixabay
However, a unified team of humans, robots, and AI working together could maintain this infrastructure with significantly less environmental impact and better human safety. These teams can include people who work remotely with multi-robot teams of autonomous air and underwater vehicles, as well as crawling or land robots.
Transformative Tech
Robotics can help people interact with complex, vulnerable environments without harming them. Robots using non-contact sensing methods such as radar and sonar can interact with the ocean infrastructure and its surroundings without causing disruption or damage.
An even more advanced sensor technology known as low frequency sonar – a sound-based technology inspired by the signals used by dolphins to communicate – enables the inspection of structures such as underwater infrastructure and submarine cables in the ocean without damaging the environment.
By using low frequency sonar technology with autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) – robots that drive themselves – we can better understand how structures like underwater cables interact with the environment. We can also help prevent problems such as biofouling, where microorganisms, plants, algae or small animals accumulate on cable surfaces. A biologically contaminated cable can become heavy, which can distort its protective outer layers and shorten its service life. AUVs can safely monitor and clean these cables.
Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have numerous applications when it comes to maintaining and repairing turbines at sea. Zil / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
Above the surface
Robots can also help over water. When wind turbine blades reach the end of their useful life, they are often burned or thrown in a landfill. This directly counteracts the “circular economy” approach, which advocates the avoidance of waste and the reuse of as many materials as possible and is of central importance for achieving technological sustainability. Instead, we can use robots to repair, reuse, or recycle degrading blades, thereby reducing unnecessary waste.
With drones equipped with advanced radar sensor technology, we can now detect defects in the turbines as they begin to develop. Rather than using field support vessels to haul turbine inspectors offshore, which costs around £ 250,000 a day, using robotic assistants to stay up to date on turbine maintenance saves time, money and risk.
Drones can provide people with a low-energy substitute when turbines need to be inspected for damage. Aaron Burden / Unsplash, CC BY
Not only do robots lower the financial and carbon costs of turbine maintenance, but they can also minimize the risks inherent in people working in these unpredictable environments while working more symbiotically with the environment. By using resident robots to inspect and maintain offshore renewable infrastructure, energy companies could initially reduce the number of people working in dangerous offshore roles. In time, we could even reach a point of autonomous operation – where human operators stay on land and remotely connect to offshore robotic systems.
AI is another key component in building sustainable energy systems. For example, artificially intelligent programs can help energy companies plan how turbines can be safely dismantled and safely brought back onshore. Once on land, turbines can be taken to “smart” factories that use a combination of robotics and AI to determine which of their parts can be reused.
In these teams, we can develop a robust, sustainable circular economy for the offshore renewable energy sector.
David Flynn, Professor of Embedded Intelligence in Energy Systems, Heriot-Watt University
This article is republished by The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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