In the spotlight: Intelligent Cable Protection System (ICPS)

As offshore floating energy platforms (solar and wind) continue to grow in size and complexity, so do the demands on their supporting systems – especially subsea power cables. Today, cable failures represent the single largest operational expense in offshore wind, driving both direct repair costs and lost revenue due to unplanned downtime. Despite this, much of the industry still relies on reactive maintenance strategies that are slow, risky, and expensive – involving specialized vessels, weather windows, divers, or ROVs.

At FORE-PAIR we’re also addressing this challenge through an Intelligent Cable Protection System (ICPS) – in collaboration with the Advanced Offshore Components team at Rosenxt. ICPS is designed primarily for floating offshore wind farms, where dynamic cable loads and harsh conditions demand new levels of resilience, insight, and intelligence.

From Passive Protection to Predictive Intelligence

At the heart of the solution – as a first step – is a new generation of polyurethane-based bend stiffeners. These are engineered not only to physically protect dynamic cables from excessive bending loads, but also to act as sensor-equipped monitoring units. Within FORE-PAIR, the focus is to develop and validate this intelligent system around the bend stiffener up to technology readiness level (TRL) 4.

The goal: to detect mechanical stress and damage indicators (even sabotage) at an early stage – enabling predictive maintenance and risk-based inspection before failure occurs.
 

The vision behind ICPS

• Sensors embedded within the bend stiffener material capture real-time mechanical behavior during turbine operation.
• This data is processed to detect anomalies that may indicate cable fatigue, damage or external interference.
• The Information information is securely stored and integrated into a centralized data platform across the floating wind farm.
• Operators gain actionable insights to plan targeted maintenance – reducing the need for emergency response and extending cable life.
• The concept will be extended – in a second step – to additional cable protection components, like bend restrictors. The ambition is to create a connected, intelligent protection ecosystem that increases resilience, transparency, and operational efficiency across floating offshore wind farms.

In a future development stage, the system could enable autonomous communication between the ICPS and a Rosenxt Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). In the event of a detected anomaly, the AUV could be deployed automatically for inspection – and, where technically feasible, initiate corrective actions or repair operations.

Looking Ahead

ICPS is more than a component – it represents a step towards smarter cable systems that combine mechanical durability with digital intelligence. 

In the future, such solutions could enable not only targeted interventions, but comprehensive, condition-based cable asset management across floating offshore wind farms.