RWE, one of the world’s leading renewable energy companies, has signed an agreement with the Danish firm Systematic to deploy an innovative information management tool across its global fleet of offshore wind farms. The new system will be installed at RWE’s offshore wind projects in the UK first, followed by Germany, Denmark and Sweden and with a view to expanding its use more widely in the future. RWE’s offshore wind farms Humber Gateway and Rampion have already transitioned to using SITE.
“By implementing this new software tool to manage our global offshore wind fleet, we are taking an important step towards harmonising our control systems and optimising the operational efficiency of our projects. As one of the world’s most experienced offshore wind businesses, we understand that it is critical to try to anticipate the future needs of the offshore industry, and to ensure our people and our systems are well set up to deal with that”, says Sven Utermöhlen, Chief Operating Officer Wind Offshore Global, RWE Renewables
Under the contract, software company Systematic will supply it’s marine management tool, called SITE, to manage vessel and personnel information as well as existing operational data from all of RWE’s offshore projects. The tool will ensure RWE can optimize its offshore operations by ensuring working processes, induction and safety measures are consistent for both its Operations & Maintenance teams and its contractors around the world.
SITE is a cloud-based, software tool for managing offshore wind operations and can be scaled to include everything from a single wind farm to monitoring clusters of different wind farms worldwide. The new system will be installed at RWE’s offshore wind projects in the UK first, followed by Germany, Denmark and Sweden and with a view to expanding its use more widely in the future. RWE’s offshore wind farms Humber Gateway and Rampion have already transitioned to using SITE.
Claus Byskov, Systematic’s Senior Manager for Digital Transformation, said: “RWE’s ambition to manage a large set of operational data with the software solution provided by Systematic fits well with our goal to move beyond traditional marine coordination. We aim to support our customers with innovative solutions for managing offshore wind operations and to deliver the data needed to increase operational efficiency across a global portfolio of offshore wind farms.”
RWE’s offshore portfolio continues to expand in the UK. It’s Triton Knoll offshore wind farm is in a highly advanced stage of construction, while the 1.4 gigawatts (GW) Sofia offshore project at Dogger Bank has now started onshore enabling works and construction. In addition, four extension projects are already beginning public consultation, while RWE recently bid successfully for two new offshore sites with a potential total installed capacity of 3 GW in The Crown Estate’s Offshore Wind Round 4 Leasing auction.
As one of the world’s leading renewable energy companies, RWE targets to invest from 2020 until 2022 €5 billion net in renewable energy and to grow its global renewables portfolio to more than 13 gigawatts of net capacity.
Source: RWE
