Earlier this year, the Carbon Trust picked five winners of a dynamic export cable competition within its Floating Wind Joint Industry Project (Floating Wind JIP).

A press release said that the successful companies were Norway’s Aker Solutions, Japan’s Furukawa Electric, Greece’s Hellenic Cables, JDR Cable Systems in the U.K. and Zhongtian Technology Submarine Cable in China. The goal is to draw on the expertise of existing offshore wind cable suppliers and the oil and gas supply chain to "support the design, initial testing and development of dynamic cables ranging from 130 kV to 250 kV to enable the efficient transmission of power from floating wind turbines to shore."

The results of the first phase of the project, which will conclude in March 2020, could help to "inform subsequent project phases to support the deployment of dynamic export cables across the industry," the release said.

"The lack of dynamic export cables has been identified as a hurdle that needs to be overcome by industry to ensure the commercialization of floating wind farms, and we are excited to begin work to ensure that this technology is ready in time for commercial floating wind projects," said Carbon Trust offshore wind manager Rory Shanahan. "We are delighted with the response we got from the industry and we are looking forward to working with the five competition winners."

BPP Cables is supporting the competition, which aims to ensure that this necessary technology is a viable option for developers for commercial floating wind projects within the next five to 10 years.

At its website, the U.K.-based organization describes Carbon Trust as "an independent, expert partner of leading organizations around the world, helping them contribute to and benefit from a more sustainable future through carbon reduction, resource efficiency strategies and commercializing low carbon technologies."

In 2017, the Carbon Trust’s Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA) initiative "launched a new global innovation competition to find and fund the development of innovative solutions to a challenge facing the offshore wind farm industry today: how to monitor the condition of subsea cables to ensure that they are not damaged during the load out and installation process. The competition seeks to identify and support the development of novel condition monitoring systems for subsea cables. "Looking at £213 million in insurance losses from 28 UK offshore wind claims between 2002 and 2015, 68% were directly due to cable faults occurring predominately during the construction phase."