Innovation Exchange challenge: Efficient Grease Removal for Safer Offshore Wind Operations

The Innovation Exchange is supporting G+, a member organisation containing the majority of the World’s major offshore wind farm operators and wind turbine manufacturers, to find solutions for the industry’s operational challenge to remove used grease effectively from mechanical components. G+ and its members wish to engage innovators to find solutions to this challenge, to improve safety and efficiency of operations while working offshore.

The UK is a global leader in offshore wind with over 14 Gigawatts of operational offshore wind farms in UK waters.

All offshore wind farms require significant operations and maintenance schedules that include technician teams, delivered to site via Crew Transfer Vessel (CTV) or Offshore Service Vessels (SOVs). There is high demand for vessels, human resource, and tooling to enable maintenance of large mechanical and electrical components.

The Challenge

The grease removal challenge

Main bearings are typically designed to receive grease repeatedly through their lifetime, where new grease is inserted into the bearing and old grease excretes into a grease tray. Once a year, for a main bearing in an offshore wind turbine, the grease needs to be removed from the grease tray and the surrounding area. The areas are very hard to reach for both the technician and any cleaning equipment. Used grease is often difficult to handle and in many cases has solidified or turned into a thick, glutenous substance that is difficult to remove. Effective removal takes up technician’s time whilst at sea, leading to increased H&S risks, as well as increased costs, of both the technician’s time as well as the supporting infrastructure (CTV or SOV and equipment). The ergonomic challenge of reaching the area for cleaning also poses further H&S risk.

Despite searching, operators have not found existing market-available cleaning or electro-mechanical devices that can remove the grease quickly and efficiently. This is due to the viscosity and sticky nature of the grease, after it has been through the bearing, and, in most cases, sat offshore for many months. The current process for removal of grease involves the technician manually scraping the grease tray and disposing of it in bags that are then removed from the turbine by the technician.

In the G+ offshore wind H&S incident dataset (2014-Q3 2024), there were 86 incidents involving grease, 77% of which were in operational sites. Looking at the incident area, two areas stand out as being the most grease related. 24 incidents, representing 28% of the total, occurred in the turbine nacelle, and 22 incidents, representing 26% of the total, occurred in the turbine hub and blades. Over half of all grease incidents occurred in these two areas.

Solution areas and requirements

The Challenge holder is looking for solutions to make the task easier or faster, while not compromising safety. Whilst not limiting the technologies from solution providers, it is expected that applicants would consider innovations from some of the following areas:

• Industrial cleaning equipment
• Industrial cleaning agents
• Heavy engineering and manufacturing
• Robotics and mechatronics
• Aerospace engineering and manufacturing
• Smart autonomous systems
• Existing offshore wind farm O&M industry (new ideas)

To meet the desired timescale and risks, it is preferred that the proposed solution, or the key part(s) of the solution, has been commercially proven in other sectors. As a guideline, solutions should be TRL 5+ or deployable for field tests within one year of competition closure.

Further technical and functional requirements are available on the Innovation Exchange site at the link below.

Rewards and benefits

An offshore operation using a CTV could cost in the region of £5-10k per 12 hour day shift, inclusive of 2-3 technician teams. Transit time is included in this shift time and will vary with every site, dependent on its distance from shore. An offshore operation using an SOV could cost in the region of £20-30k per 24 hour day shift, inclusive of 5-6 technician teams that are on 2 week on/off offshore rotation. Grease removal currently is inefficient and takes 1-2 hours or more of effective technician time offshore. Any saving of this would be an improvement to operational efficiency and a reduction in health and safety risks.

Selected solution provider(s) will have the opportunity to present their solution to industry. It is also possible that further activities may be undertaken by members of the G+, including product trials, although this is not guaranteed.

The solution has potential to be deployed across offshore wind farm sites in operation, globally.

The benefits package for a successful applicant may also include:

• Support from Innovate UK Business Connect
• Technical support
• Invitation to attend or present at Innovate UK Business Connect events
• A potential business collaboration
• Investor introductions (if investment is required)
• Support if any Innovate UK or similar competitions are relevant.

Who can apply?

Entrants to this competition must be established businesses, academic institutions, start-ups, SMEs, or individual entrepreneurs, who are UK based or have the intention to set up a UK base.