WFS and Stork Launch World’s First Subsea Wireless CP Monitoring System

WFS Technologies and Stork Technical Services present Seatooth Smart CP, the world’s first subsea wireless cathodic protection (CP) monitoring system designed for retrofit to existing fields. Seatooth Smart CP monitors the effects of corrosion by measuring anode current wirelessly in “real-time” using a Seatooth S100 device and a wireless enabled ROV.

For both preventive and diagnostic applications, the Seatooth Smart CP system enables wireless monitoring of the condition of the sacrificial anode to verify it is functioning and its rate of depletion. The CP Engineer can extrapolate what weight of anode material is required to optimize levels of protection based on actual conditions on the structure. The “real time” gathering of this data signals a significant advance in asset management.

Each monitoring node converts the local data to a digital stream. The digital stream is transmitted wirelessly using Seatooth S100 from WFS, through a networked monitoring system. This data is wirelessly harvested by ROVs (or divers) as frequently as required providing the maintenance team with time-stamped data showing the condition of the CP system. This ROV gathered data indicates to the Engineer when to apply the retrofit or plan the maintenance, rather than responding to issues and failures in the field.

Seatooth Smart CP characteristics:

- Deployable in remote and inaccessible locations.

- No wires through splash zone.

- Flexible to retrofit - nodes do not require hard wiring into place

- Continuous data collection allows an accurate calculation of the end of life of an anode.

- Optimum levels of CP are applied, based on actual conditions on the structure.

- Provision of time-stamped condition data from the CP system -indicates when to apply retrofit or plan maintenance.