The work performed clearly states that the idea is valuable and the implementation is feasible. Only little changes in the objectives compared to the proposal have been identified, which are:
• Besides the structural health management service usage monitoring shall be offered. This demand of the operators is understandable and easy to implement as the proposed systems contain this information. A development step to extract decision making will be proposed.
• The importance ranking of individual services are very different in the old oil and gas industry compared to the new wind offshore industries. A clear focus on extension of life is top priority in oil and gas, whereas proper management of maintenance and inspection is of interest to the wind asset owners.
• The interviews with the various players showed standard solutions are not expected as all their assets are individual prototypes. Therefore the services have to be fragmented into modules which will be individually assembled.
• Nevertheless the development of stand-alone simple equipment for assessment of individual components is highly desired. This will be considered in the final plan of development.
With respect to concept and approach no major requests for revision have been identified. The proposed procedure already has a rather high level of professionalism.
With respect to the expected impact the figures show that the impact has been underestimated. The market potential is considerably larger than expected [5] and the other types of impact (socioeconomic and environmental) are also rated higher than anticipated.
The recent drop in oil prices has shifted the attention of the oil and gas industry more towards life extension rather than new investments [6]. Such a development comes at the right time. On the other hand the green drive for renewable energy supports the wind industry where a multi-billion investment has to be expected that requires asset management services.
With respect to the development of the business idea into a real business the following aspects are relevant:
• The total development budget proposed with EUR 1.5 million is justified and assessed to be sufficient to reach the desired technology readiness level of 9 (TRL9).
• It can be anticipated that already in the early stage of the project individual works at real cases can be acquired. These will considerably help to steer the development and contribute to the budget.
• The personal planning shows two aspects. First of all the key personnel to steer and guide the development is available and determined to that work. A problem might arise with the rapid growth of the activity due to the lack of sufficiently qualified personnel available in the market. For this purpose the intended collaboration with existing partners in Germany (Airwerk) and Great Britain (Wood Group) is considered to be essential.
• The partners own development funds are not sufficient to successfully implement the idea on the intended large scale. Therefore complementary funding by the European Programme in an SME instrument or FTI Programme will be essential for success.
• It is anticipated that after several successful applications, creating reference projects, the activity will be self-supporting in terms of financial requirements. It is further anticipated that the large players in the field (i.e. BP or Shell from Great Britain or RWE and TenneT from Germany) might be interested to acquire this new business line. Respective strategies are to be developed.
Market Potential Offshore Wind
Offshore wind has advanced by just under 2GW so far this year (2014), mainly in Germany. The country has a substantial pipeline, and while progress has been slow, it may now be accelerating. The UK has added 200MW since the start of the year and also has a substantial project pipeline [2, 4, 5].
In 2014 total investments in the clean energy sector reached a high of USD 310bn (EUR 277bn). The global wind sector saw investments rise 11% to a record USD 99.5bn (EUR 88.9bn) during the year. This was significant growth over 2013 investment of USD 80.3bn (EUR 71.7bn) and USD 80.9bn (EUR 72.3bn) in 2012.The new global total at the end of 2014 was 369.6 GW, representing cumulative market growth of more than16%, which is lower than the average growth rate over the last 10 years (2005-2014) of almost 23%.
Market Potential Offshore Oil & Gas
Douglas-Westwood’s latest edition [6] of the World Offshore Maintenance, Modifications and Operations Market Forecast 2015–2019 predicts that more than USD 426 billion will be spent over the next 5 years on offshore oil and gas maintenance, modifications, and operations (MMO).
However, a 12% decline in expenditure is expected this year. This is due to the delay and reduction of some major modifications by operators as some aspects of MMO that are indirectly associated with production are cut and further pricing pressures are applied by oil and gas company operators. In the long term, the outlook for MMO expenditure is positive and expected to reach 2014 levels by 2017.
