The demand for offshore wind has skyrocketed, like all renewable energy sources — but the necessary work of surveying, inspecting, and mapping coastal areas is stuck in the past. Bedrock’s autonomous underwater vehicles and digital platform play could redefine the sector, and the company has attracted $25.5 million in new funding to attempt it.
Every wind turbine in the sea is really a half-submerged building, and buildings need strong foundations and regular inspections — more than above-water buildings, even. Ordinarily the kind of seabottom surveys that energy companies rely on (for oil and gas as well as turbine placement) are performed using powerful sonar units carried by relatively large ships.
But this method has innumerable downsides: the cost and inefficiency of the ships and crews themselves, the frequency and volume of the sonar disturbing wildlife, the relatively limited details provided, and the inflexibility of the legacy data these often cold-war-era tools provide or feed into.
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