Abstract
In support of California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (Senate Bill 100, De León, 2018) target of 100 percent renewable retail electricity by 2045, the California Energy Commission, as required by Assembly Bill 525 (Chiu, 2021), established planning goals of 10 gigawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by 2040, with an interim target of 3 gigawatts by 2030. Environmental conditions at installation sites far offshore pose adverse fiscal and operational challenges. Additionally, potential interactions between the installations and marine life are uncertain. Aker Offshore Wind (a Mainstream Renewable Power company), in partnership with Cognite and H. T. Harvey & Associates, developed an architecture for the digital representation, or digital twin, of an offshore wind asset in an industrial DataOps platform to explore how a digital twin application, or virtual representation, can help to reduce operational expenditures and increase understanding of how a floating offshore wind installation interacts with the surrounding environment. The project used available data for overall wind farm integrity management and condition monitoring in real time, as well as wildlife interactions, culminating in the identification of 24 use-cases for reducing operational expenditures, identifying tools that enable regulatory governance to address likely monitoring needs, and aiding in understanding environmental interactions between the installations and marine life.