North Tyneside clean energy scale-up maps out “ground-breaking” growth plans

North Shields based Kinewell Energy has unveiled a “ground-breaking” new-to-market heatmapping software product backed by three global energy giants.

Officially launched concurrently at the All-Energy & Decarbonise conference in Glasgow and the VentureFest Innovation conference in Newcastle this week, the new Heatmap Software Module will help to improve the seabed surveying process during the planning phase of offshore wind farms.

Building on the success of its KLOC software, which optimises offshore wind inter-array cable layouts, the heatmapping module was initially developed to improve the seabed surveying process during the planning phase of one of the USA’s largest offshore wind farms and has since been used with two further global energy giants.

The probabilistic heatmapping software allows developers to swiftly identify which areas of a seabed require detailed surveying, despite the early project uncertainties that exist when surveying takes place, enabling developers to survey less of the site while still focusing on the most important areas where inter-array cable is most likely to be laid.

This helps developers significantly reduce overall project costs and lead times by eliminating the time and resource spent surveying swathes of undevelopable seabed. Seabed surveys are a key part of the development of an offshore wind farm, with the assessments starting around five years before construction and cost anywhere up to £8m for a 1GW wind farm.

Dr Andrew Jenkins, founder and CEO, commented: “As one of the most innovative businesses in our region, our team thrives on developing solutions to overcome difficult challenges.

“We were thrilled when one of the largest offshore wind farms in the USA set us this challenge of identifying the most likely locations where inter-array cable might be placed despite such early project uncertainties.

“The result of our team’s efforts has been incredible. Not only has it enabled developers to produce more targeted seabed surveys, but it has also supported the optimisation of export system routing, reducing wind farm development costs while saving hundreds of design hours in the process.

“We are now looking forward to rolling out the heatmap capability to our global Software as a Service (SaaS) client base as part of our wider KLOC inter-array cable layout optimisation software offering.”

The development of the software has been enabled by match-funding from the North of Tyne Combined Authority’s (NTCA) Technology, Innovation and Green Growth for Offshore Renewables (TIGGOR) programme administered by the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult.

By Matthew Neville – Senior Correspondent, Bdaily

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