Feasibility of Seakeeping, Cost and GHG Efficiency of <24m SWATH design for ROV deployment

海上关键国家基础设施，如海底电缆和风力发电场，需要增加资产完整性检查，以确保安全运营，并通过预防性维护减少停机时间。每年离岸风电场海底检查成本估计为每1GW 1800万GB/年(英国预计到2030年为9亿GB/50GW；皇家地产)。鉴于到2028年，69GW运营机队中将有20%的机龄超过10年，OSW的检查和服务预计将快速增长。海底检查需要从海上平台发射和回收遥控潜水器(ROV)，海上平台受海况变化的影响。目前的船舶设计效率低下，例如，为了增加操作检查时间，公司部署了更大的船舶，这些船舶在大型海况下提供更稳定的平台，但每天消耗10-50立方米的柴油(39.6-132吨二氧化碳/天)。运营商正在研究规模较小的无人驾驶解决方案。然而，这些较小的平台仅限于在最大海浪高度为1.5米的海区作业。在英国，这将限制5月至8月的运营，运营时间为50%(约61天)。如果我们在降低能源成本的同时增加海上风能，这在商业上是不可行的。Acua Ocean(AO)通过清洁海洋示范竞赛1(CMDC1)设计了一艘小型水平面区域双体(SWATH)氢动力船，重点是海洋监测和保护。小水线面双体船具有内在的增强的稳定性，因为根据经验，小水线面双体船提供的耐波性相当于单体船总吨位的15倍。因此，AOS 21吨小水线面双体船理论上具有300吨单体船的耐波性，使其成为一种更高效的全船设计。在这项可行性研究中，AO和SMMI的目标是对船只的耐波性进行波浪水池测试，以模拟ROV有效载荷的部署和回收操作极限。波浪水箱测试的成功演示和模拟将展示AOS船的能力，并将使AOS和最终客户能够加快开发商业ROV部署系统，从小范围扩展到新的应用和用例，在快速增长的矿石和近海基础设施市场开辟新的商业和地理机遇。

Offshore critical national infrastructure, such as subsea cables and wind farms, requires increasing asset integrity inspections to ensure safe operations, and decrease downtime through preventative maintenance. Annual Offshore Windfarm subsea inspections costs are estimated at £18m/yr per 1GW (£900m @50GW anticipated by 2030 in UK; Crown Estate). Given that by 2028 20% of the 69GW operational fleet will be more than 10 years old, inspection and services of OSW is expected to grow rapidly. Subsea inspections require launch and recovery of Remote Operated Vehicles (ROV) from an offshore platform which is subject to variable seastate conditions. Current vessel designs are inefficient E.g. to increase operational inspection time, companies deploy larger vessels which offer a more stable platform in large sea states, but consume 10-50m3/day of diesel (39.6-132tCO2/day). Operators are investigating smaller uncrewed solutions. However these smaller platforms are restricted to operating in seastates <3-4 force max, with significant wave height <1.5m. In the UK this would limit operations from May-Aug, with operational time <50% (~61days). This is unviable commercially if we are to increase offshore wind whilst reducing the levelized cost of energy. ACUA Ocean (AO) through Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition 1 (CMDC1) designed a small waterplane area twin hull (SWATH) hydrogen powered vessel with a focus on marine monitoring and protection. SWATH vessels have an intrinsic increased stability, as a rule of thumb SWATH vessels offer a seakeeping performance equivalent to monohull vessels 15x the gross tonnage. Therefore, AOs 21t SWATH vessel has a theoretical seakeeping performance of a 300t monohull vessel making it a significantly more efficient whole-ship design. During this feasibility study, AO and SMMI aim to conduct a wave tank test of the vessels seakeeping capabilities to simulate ROV payload deployment and recovery operational limits. A successful demonstration and simulation of a wave tank testing would demonstrate the capability of AOs vessels and would enable AO and end customers to accelerate the development of a commercial ROV deployment system from small SWATH and expand the AOs capabilities to new applications and use cases, opening up new commercial and geographical opportunities within a rapidly growing ORE and offshore infrastructure markets.