The world’s first benchmarking platform for offshore wind farms, SPARTA (System Performance, Availability and Reliability Trend Analysis), has released its second annual performance report today (Wednesday 21 November 2018) highlighting the vital contribution its reporting assets make to UK energy generation and carbon reduction.
The SPARTA Portfolio Review 2017/18 summarises key insights from the benchmarking platform, which is managed by The Crown Estate and the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult. SPARTA covers 77% of the installed capacity of UK operational offshore wind and this latest report summarises data from contributing wind farms in 1 April 2017 to 31 March 2018.
Highlights from the report include:
- UK offshore wind farms that report data to SPARTA produced over 15TWh of energy, enough to power 4 million homes.
- They contributed to a 5.8% reduction in CO2 emissions, equivalent to 4 million tonnes of CO2 abated.
- The average amount of potential energy a turbine is extracting from the wind is 94.5%.
Through the collection and sharing of data from operational offshore wind farms, SPARTA aims to support improvements in the availability, reliability and performance of offshore wind assets, which will drive efficiency improvements, sector innovation, and investment and development.
Operational data is collected across over 100 key performance indicators at system level (from blade to onshore substation), analysed and reported upon monthly, allowing individual performance to be benchmarked against the industry and acted upon by members.
Mona Riis, Manager Operational Excellence, New Energy Operation at Equinor, was recently appointed as Co-Chair of the SPARTA Industry Steering Group. She said: “SPARTA is a vital tool in helping us to understand how the UK’s offshore wind fleet is performing overall, and in allowing individual companies to drill down further into their own performance relative to their competitors.
“I come from an oil and gas background, where benchmarking is commonplace. Benchmarking our wind asset performance is an essential tool for a maturing industry and enables us to undertake deeper insight and analysis and make more informed decisions regarding offshore wind farm management, which ultimately drives cost reduction, increases production and makes the UK’s offshore wind fleet more efficient.”
The SPARTA programme is actively seeking to widen membership and reporting outside of the UK, creating deeper insight and analysis and more informed decisions regarding offshore wind farm management. Owner/operators not currently involved in the SPARTA project are invited to join the group and should contact co-sponsors The Crown Estate (Adrian.fox@thecrownestate.co.uk) or ORE Catapult (chris.hill@ore.catapult.org.uk) in the first instance.
About the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult
ORE Catapult was established in 2013 by the UK Government and is one of a network of Catapults set up by Innovate UK in high growth industries. It is the UK’s leading innovation centre for offshore renewable energy and helps to reduce the cost of offshore renewable energy, supporting the growth of the industry and creating UK benefit.
About The Crown Estate:
- The Crown Estate is a £14bn real estate business specialising in commercial property in central London, prime regional retail and offshore wind. It also has a substantial rural and coastal portfolio and manages the seabed around England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
- Established by an Act of Parliament, as an independent commercial business, it returns 100% of its annual profits to the Treasury for the benefit of the public finances. This has totalled £2.7bn over the last ten years
- On the seabed, The Crown Estate is responsible for awarding seabed rights for offshore renewable energy projects as well as marine aggregate extraction, carbon capture and natural gas storage, cables and pipelines.
