Indeximate has completed a demonstration of its cable health monitoring technology for RWE at the Arkona offshore wind farm in the Baltic Sea. The trial followed Indeximate’s success in RWE’s 2023 innovation competition and took place over winter 2024–25, monitoring two cable strings serving 13 turbines.
The company’s Scattersphere technology uses existing optical fibres within subsea power cables to collect and interpret distributed acoustic sensing data. The monitoring focused on critical areas of the cable protection system between touchdown and aperture, as well as inside the monopile where installing sensors has traditionally been difficult.
During the six-month trial, data were recorded under typical winter storm conditions, including wave heights of up to seven metres. Measurements were taken 2,000 times per second at 10-metre intervals. The information was processed using Indeximate’s Indeximation technology and uploaded to its cloud-based Scattersphere platform, where automated analytics assessed factors such as abrasion, strain, fatigue, and vibration.
The analysis identified movement and stress patterns in the cables, helping to show how they responded to varying wave and weather conditions. These results may support earlier detection of potential cable issues in future offshore operations.
image courtesy Indeximate
