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'Drone boats will be the new normal'

Charis Scott-Holm,East Yorkshire and Lincolnshireand
Richard Stead,Grimsby
News imageBBC Four men in high-vis clothing stand on a gangway next to a fluorescent yellow boat, which has Orsted branding on the side. Grimsby Docks can be seen in the background.BBC
The drone boat will be sent 125 miles (200km) off the coast of Lincolnshire

A remotely operated boat will survey an area hundreds of miles offshore - while being controlled from an inland airport.

The Orsted Examiner is being launched this week from Grimsby by the renewable energy company, which is currently building the Hornsea 3 windfarm in the North Sea.

The vessel contains enough fuel to be at sea for several months, and an internet connection means it can be remotely controlled from anywhere.

Sam Anderson-Hall, senior construction project manager, said using an uncrewed service vessel (USV) on an offshore windfarm would become "the new normal" in both the maritime and renewables industries.

News imageA man in an orange high-vis jacket with a life vest stands with his hands behind his back in front of the yellow vessel. He has short brown hair and a beard and looks seriously at the camera.
Sam Anderson-Hall said his team had spent a year working on the launch, with several years of research and development taking place beforehand

Anderson-Hall said the boat would be used "primarily to survey the seabed for our offshore wind farm construction".

He said the vessel would increase safety for employees, as the crew which would have normally been working onboard a boat in "the harsh North Sea environment" are now "warm, safe and home to see the family at the end of the day".

News imageA man in a yellow high-vis jacket with a life vest stands with his hands behind his pockets in front of the yellow vessel. He has short brown hair and glasses.
Ole Christensen is normally based in Denmark, but has spent many weeks in Grimsby ahead of the launch

Ole Christensen, from Orsted's meteorological team, will helping manage the USV from a control room at Humberside Airport.

He said the equipment on the vessel measures wind speed and direction and wave heights, which "tells us how our wind farms are affected if we are putting up turbines in a specific area".

He added: "It's very unique and something that no one else in the industry has and we are using it in new ways and coming up with new use cases all the time."

News imageA man in an orange high-vis jacket with a life vest stands with his hands behind his pockets in front of a gangway. He wears an orange hat and is smiling.
Dan Plewman usually divides his time between onshore and offshore, but does not need to be on this unmanned vessel

Dan Plewman, a hydrographic surveyor for Spectrum Offshore, said the vessel could be used to "help the construction vessels that come in understand what's going on in the seabed in real time".

He said this initial trip would be used to "calibrate it and verify that everything's working as we expect it to work" and the vessel would be using sites including a shipwreck to check its sensors before it is used for "full survey operations".

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