Entrants to this competition must be:

• established businesses, academic institutions, start-ups, SMEs, or individual entrepreneurs (Academic submitting proposals must clearly show the route to market and ideally involve their commercial partner)
• UK based or have the intention to set up a UK base

Applications will be assessed on:

• relevance to the defined challenge
• benefit of implementation
• feasibility/economic viability
• innovative nature
• ability to launch in line with expected timescales
• credibility of applicant company
• coherence of the proposed business model
• development potential
• maturity of the solution
• suitability for the intended geographic market

Launch of the competition: 15 September 2026

Deadline for applications: 30 October 2026

Selection and notification of finalists: 30 November 2026

Date of pitch day: December 26/January 27

Successful applicants will be given an opportunity to pitch to ScottishPower Renewables. Selected solutions may be benchmarked by SPR on an operational wind farm alongside existing structural monitoring instrumentation, with the potential for further adoption if trials are successful. This is not guaranteed and will be solely at the discretion of ScottishPower Renewables.

There is no fixed unit price for this challenge. SPR’s intention is a device cheap enough to fit on every foundation of a project rather than on a selected sample, so affordability at fleet scale is more important than the price of any single unit. Applicants should present a credible route to a low cost per unit at volume, recognising that the battery, enclosure and mounting are likely to drive cost more than the sensing hardware. Solutions that reuse or adapt proven components from other sectors, and that can be recovered and redeployed across successive projects, are well suited to this model.

Existing background IP associated with a potential solution will remain with Solution Provider(s). Where any new IP generation is envisaged, it will be subject to the mutual IP agreement of the solution provider(s) and challenge holder.

Any commercial deployment of a transferred solution or newly developed solution, through licensing, joint venture, partnership, or direct investment, will be subject to the commercial agreement between the solution provider(s) and challenge holder.

Where necessary, a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) may be signed to uphold confidentiality in the engagement between the solution provider(s) and challenge holder. (This would be expected to be after company selection, it is suggested that details of IP be not disclosed, focus on the outcomes of the technology proposed).

Innovate UK and Innovate UK Business Connect do not take any share of IP ownership or enter commercial ventures through the iX programme.

Functional requirements

The solution should:

Record structural vibration of the foundation continuously and autonomously from foundation installation, ideally from fit out at the fabrication yard, until the turbine is commissioned and its permanent condition monitoring systems are available.

Operate fully standalone, with no reliance on turbine or grid power and no requirement for real time communications or integration with site systems; data connectivity to offshore construction sites is constrained by remoteness and by cyber security controls, so the device must work without it.

Be suitable for both monopile and jacket foundations, mounted inside the transition piece; attachment to the internal steel wall by magnets or strapping is acceptable (a modern monopile transition piece is a steel tube of roughly 10 to 12 m internal diameter and space is not a major constraint).

Be simple to install by foundation fabrication or installation personnel, with a straightforward means of activation, for example a start button, at or after installation.

Log time stamped data to onboard storage for the full deployment; an SD card or similar removable media is preferred over USB, as USB ports are commonly locked on corporate laptops.

Allow simple manual data retrieval by a technician visiting the foundation once the site is accessible and energised.

Be recoverable, refurbishable and redeployable on subsequent projects.

Be low cost and suitable for volume manufacture, so that a unit can be installed on every foundation of a project; SPR has recently been installing in the region of 50 to 100 or more turbines per year.

Not interfere with foundation or turbine installation activities, and not require structural modification of the foundation.

Not require the device to capture weather or metocean data; SPR holds wind and wave data for its sites and will align it with the vibration record using timestamps.

Easily portable by one person for safe handling, while being ruggedised and shock proof.

The primary mounting location is the transition piece, because it is installed first and must be monitored before the tower exists. A second unit mounted higher in the tower would see larger accelerations once the turbine is installed and could be offered as an option, but it is not required.

Technical requirements

The solution should:

Measure very low frequency structural vibration. Foundation and combined foundation and turbine modes are typically below 1 Hz, so the sensor must respond down to DC (0 Hz). A frequency range of DC to 100 Hz is expected.

Be sensitive enough to detect low energy events. Structural vibration events usually carry very little acceleration or displacement, so sensitivity, not survivability of large shocks, is the main technical challenge.

Measure acceleration on three axes (X, Y, Z) with bandwidth and resolution sufficient to identify the natural frequencies and resonant behaviour of the foundation alone and of the combined foundation and turbine structure.

Provide a sensitivity of at least 500 mV/g, a measurement range of approximately plus or minus 2 g to plus or minus 5 g, and a noise floor of not more than 100 µg/√Hz, which is what allows low energy structural vibration to be detected.

Record continuously at a sampling rate of at least 50 Hz, capturing peak accelerations and discrete events. Continuous recording for the full deployment is the goal; where that is not achievable with the technology available, applicants should state clearly what their solution can and cannot do and describe any compromise proposed, such as data reduction during quiet periods.

Provide accurate timekeeping across the full deployment, so that records can be aligned with metocean and construction data.

Achieve a battery life of at least 6 months, ideally up to 12 months. Supplementary energy harvesting solutions may be proposed where beneficial; however, simplicity, reliability and ease of deployment are prioritised, and solutions that introduce unnecessary complexity may be viewed less favourably.

Provide onboard storage sized for the full deployment at the required sample rates.

Offer ingress protection of IP65 or better; the transition piece interior is a relatively dry internal space, but the top can be briefly open to the weather during installation, and the when the unit is transferred off the turbine at the end of monitoring campaign via workboat.

Output data in an open, documented format readable by SPR’s in house engineering teams.

The application form for this challenge will require applicants to provide company information and answer 3 questions – Idea Summary, Technology Readiness and Intellectual Property – each with a limit of 300 words.

Optionally, up to 3 supporting documents can be attached to the application. We recommend that supporting documents are limited to those which are directly relevant to the application. Please note that applications with no supporting document will not receive any penalty in assessment. Supporting documents which the Assessment Panel deems to be superfluous may be disregarded. Examples of useful additional documents include product images or short specification sheets, slide decks detailing the solution and/or company background, or solution case studies.

We recommend that you complete the application form in Google Chrome as other browsers may have compatibility issues. The application form does not need to be completed in one session and can be saved for future edits. Please ensure that you toggle “Stage Complete” for each section before submission. Note that you will no longer be able to edit your application once you have clicked “Submit Idea” at the bottom of the Summary page.