TTI Marine Renewables secures Scottish Enterprise Innovation funding for their Mooring Rope Sensor

TTI Marine Renewables Ltd, is pleased to announce that we have been awarded a grant from Scottish Enterprise to develop our innovative mooring rope sensor.  From a total of 69 applicants TTI Marine Renewables Ltd is one of 22 companies to be awarded funding under the “CAN-DO Offshore Wind Innovation Feasibility Challenge Call”.  The value of the grants offered ranges from £30K to £50K.

Floating Offshore Wind (FOW) mooring system designers, developers and operators are increasingly looking to the adoption of synthetic fibre rope mooring systems to unlock large tracts of seabed designated for offshore floating wind on the UK continental shelf and worldwide. The ropes can either be used as a replacement for or in combination with chain. While both chain and synthetic fibre ropes have a strong track record in the O&G sector FOW introduces new technical challenges. Extensive use of fibre rope is expected in the FOW sector due to its ability to reduce anchor and mooring loads, minimise the mooring footprint, offer installation benefits and best system weight and cost.

Whilst solutions exist for mooring tension measurement, there are currently no robust means of permanent strain monitoring for extensible synthetic mooring ropes. To ensure through-life health of wind farm arrays and integrity of their mooring systems it will be important to simultaneously monitor mooring line strain and tension. This will improve the understanding of the long-term behaviour of synthetic fibre ropes and help minimise the system inspection requirements.

As part of the Tension Technology International Ltd Group, TTI Marine Renewables Ltd, based in Inverness, Scotland has a strong track record of developing, testing and qualifying enabling mooring solutions. We work closely with our sister company TTI Testing Ltd, which has an extensive track record in the testing of mooring system components