By Rachel Nicholls-Lee, Naval Architect Technical Authority
Innovation in anchoring and mooring solutions has a key role to play in supporting the UK to deliver on its floating wind ambitions. Maturing technical expertise and applied experience is driving confidence and investment in a highly specialised supply chain.
Technical challenges driving innovation
In partnership with the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult, Flotation Energy has supported Innovate UK in running four industry challenges through the organisation’s Innovation Exchange (iX) programme, which are fostering innovation in cable quick connect and disconnect solutions, cable monitoring, mooring tensioners and intelligent anchor monitoring.
Innovate UK is the UK’s innovation agency, part of UK Research and Innovation.
The Innovation Exchange (iX) programme seeks to connect UK businesses with cutting-edge solutions – matching industry challenges with trailblazing companies across different sectors and encouraging them to work together to accelerate innovation through connection and collaboration.
The challenges set received entries from 38 different businesses, with the Flotation Energy and ORE Catapult teams working with the challenge winners to support the development of their technology.
Rachel Nicholls-Lee, Naval Architect Technical Authority (in centre) – June 2025 visit to Buoyant Production Technologies (BPT) – a wholly owned subsidiary of Crondall Energy
Challenge winners
- Quoceant Ltd’s Q-Connect technology, selected as the winner of the challenge for cable quick connect and disconnect solutions
- Acteon’s Rocksteady TT technology, selected as the winner of the mooring tensioners challenge
- Crondall Energy’s SafeMoor technology, selected as the winner of the anchor monitoring challenge
- Viper Innovations technology, selected as the winner of the challenge for cable monitoring solutions
”We are delighted to support these Innovate UK Innovation Exchange challenges.
As a member of the extended team supporting the winners, the challenges have been a pleasure to be involved in. The depth of expertise and commitment on show across the businesses that entered the challenges has been truly inspiring.
Innovation in cable quick connect and disconnect solutions, cable monitoring, mooring tensioners and intelligent anchor monitoring will be of benefit across the floating offshore wind industry.
The challenges demonstrate how floating offshore wind benefits from collaboration rather than competition, and have provided a great opportunity to work with innovative home-grown companies like Quoceant, Acteon, Crondall Energy and Viper Innovations as they develop these cutting edge technologies. We look forward to continuing to support them.
Rachel Nicholls-Lee, Naval Architect Technical Authority
” Collaborative partnerships with respected industry bodies such as Innovate UK, and innovative companies including Flotation Energy, resonate profoundly with our mission to provide specialist expertise and support, coupled with dedicated test and demonstration facilities that can help to de-risk new technologies and accelerate innovation to deliver measurable benefit for the wider offshore wind sector.
Jack Paterson, Team Leader - Floating Offshore Wind, ORE Catapult
About the technologies
Quoceant’s Q-Connect technology
Scottish engineering company Quoceant’s Q-Connect technology is designed to enable rapid, repeatable connection and disconnection of mooring lines and electrical cables. Initially developed for small scale marine renewables use, the Quoceant team have been developing designs for larger scale versions for use with floating offshore wind technology, including high strength mooring and high-voltage electrical quick connection systems.
Acteon’s Rocksteady Tension Tool
The Rocksteady Tension Tool (RSTT) developed by East Anglian subsea services company Acteon is a reusable in-line winch and connection system designed to enable mid-line hook-up of mooring lines at final tension. The technology is designed to improve the connection and disconnection processes between floating offshore wind turbines and their mooring systems. Rocksteady is intended to reduce capital and installation costs by removing the need for fairleads, tensioners and chains, and aims to lower vessel size requirements and reduce rigging operations by enabling the use of a reusable subsea winch system. The RSTT operates in tandem with Acteon’s Rocksteady connector, a subsea quick connector that can release under load and has been tested to 1,000 tonnes.
SafeMoor – Mooring integrity management
SafeMoor provides a holistic approach to mooring system integrity, covering the entire lifecycle—from design and manufacturing to installation and operation, with continuous feedback.
Using a minimal number of off the shelf, low cost, and easy to maintain sensors coupled with bespoke software, SafeMoor provides 24/7 monitoring of the condition and life-time utilisation of all mooring system components, across the wind farm as well as substructure performance and response. This proactive approach enables targeted inspections and timely component replacements before any failures occur, significantly reducing risk and maintenance costs.
Finally, with direct access to material samples (collected during manufacturing) and real load histories, confident forensic comparison of recovered / inspected components maybe undertaken to potentially extend operational lifetimes.
Viper Innovations
Bristol tech firm Viper Innovations’ autonomous dynamic cable inspection solution builds upon their record of providing electrical monitoring and asset integrity solutions for a range of industries. The winning solution from Viper Innovations, leverages advanced technologies such as V-LIM and Spread Spectrum Time Domain Reflectometry (SSTDR), which focus on insulation monitoring, insulation protection and mechanical condition assessment for dynamic cables. The technology solutions from Viper Innovations address critical and currently under served requirements in the floating offshore wind sector.
To learn more about the Innovate UK Innovation Exchange (iX) challenges and how Flotation Energy has supported these important initiatives, email [email protected].
