This project will conduct the substantial industrial R&D required to prototype and test a novel distributed photonic sensing technology for the power and energy industries. The unique sensing technology, developed by Synaptec Ltd, can provide wide-area monitoring of both electrical and mechanical parameters (e.g. voltage, current, temperature, vibration) from across the electrical grid from central locations such as transmission substations. By piggy-backing on pre-installed optical fibre on power networks, it will allow network operators to leverage existing infrastructure to improve the robustness of network protection, monitoring and control functions in order to bring on more distributed and renewable generation and reduce the risk and impact of faults or outages on the electrical system. This 36-month project will allow Synaptec to fully develop, validate and prototype a full suite of sensor systems (through both hardware and software engineering) based on this innovative technology platform in partnership with the UK's leading industrial, research and metrological institutions, and to prepare for commercial pilot installations with UK and EU electricity network operators.

Bellrock Technology is an early-stage high tech software company based in Glasgow. We develop a disruptive software platform, called Lumen, which helps companies access advanced data analytics to support operational decision makers. Our beachhead market is the electric power sector. Here, generators and network operators are gathering more and more data, which is intended to help improve the performance, increase the reliability and extend the operating lifetimes of critical equipment. Linking operational data with specialist analytics that can explain it to provide meaningful information has become crucial. Such tools enable users to take decisions that are not only cost-effective but are also justifiable and in particular, can support companies’ freedom to operate in regulated or safety critical industries. Implementing such analytics has traditionally been a time-consuming and costly process due to the difficulty of linking them with operational (perhaps legacy) data systems. Lumen handles this intelligently, meaning that bespoke development is no longer required. These problems are not limited to the electric power sector. Preliminary discussions with oil and gas field operators have indicated that corresponding issues exist in their industry. According to Forrester Research, the market for data analytics within oil and gas is estimated to grow from 4.29m in 2014 to 19.65m in 2019 to help tackle such issues. We believe that Lumen could help to unlock the market for such analytics and to accelerate their adoption. Given the expected growth in data analytics and the increasing need for the support they can provide, we wish to carry out a proof of market exercise to engage formally with oil and gas operators and assess whether Lumen has true commercial viability in this sector. The exercise will enable us to fully assess competitors, our Intellectual Property position and will produce an estimate of timescales and costs to enter the market.

Bellrock Technology is seeking advice to launch a secure, scalable and user-configurable cloud platform that will better support electric power companies' decisions and help to reduce their operating costs.

Operations and maintenance costs are currently expected to account for 25% of the total lifetime costs of an offshore wind farm. Lumen® is an innovative software framework for decision support that could help those responsible for equipment significantly lower these costs. Simultaneously, it could help to increase wind farm availability and and extend the useful lifetimes of assets. This project will assess how Lumen could be applied to assist the offshore wind industry in carrying out cost-efficient condition-based maintenance and avoiding expensive unplanned maintenance. It will evaluate the framework's potential within the industry and demonstrate the decision support it could provide.