Foundation Monitoring Offshore Wind Farm Alpha Ventus

DOTI operates the Alpha Ventus offshore wind test field in the German Bight (North Sea). The farm consists of twelve wind turbine generators (WTG), six from the company ADWEN on tripod foundations and six from the company SENVION on jacket foundations.

The approvals of the licensing authority are subject to the application of a monitoring system for the foundation structures. 

One of the core objectives of the monitoring is the early detection of any vertical pile head displacement that may develop and become permanent. Due to the lack of technical possibilities for direct metrological monitoring of the target variable pile head displacement, the global foundation structure inclination in the area of the tower base is to be monitored with the aid of a very precise measuring technique.

First, the entire foundation structure was numerically modeled using a finite element simulation and a monitoring concept was developed.

The core of the monitoring is an AI-based analysis process. With the help of self-developed machine learning methods, the sensor data is analyzed and correlated with the prevailing conditions in the wind farm in order to detect the smallest long-term changes at an early stage.

According to a traffic light system developed with the customer and approved by the certification body, alarm and warning thresholds were defined, which are detected and reported by the monitoring system when exceeded.