Kinewell’s inaugural Open Innovation Day on Thursday 19 February brought together over 150 industry leaders in Blyth to demonstrate new technologies, accelerate innovation and enhance collaboration across the floating offshore wind supply chain.
Kinewell, the Newcastle-headquartered cleantech scale-up specialising in advanced digital tools for offshore wind design optimisation, launched their latest innovation at the event. The new tool called KOMET targets down selection of floating offshore wind technology choices and helps projects progress to an investible de-risked state quicker.
Unlocking 80% of the World’s Offshore Wind Resource
Around 80% of the world’s offshore wind resource lies in waters too deep for fixed-bottom foundations. Floating offshore wind represents the key to unlocking that opportunity, and the UK is widely recognised as a global leader in the sector’s development.
In the event’s keynote speech, Kinewell’s CEO and Founder Dr Andrew Jenkins acknowledged the potential of the industry saying “By 2050, the global floating offshore wind market is forecast to reach £1 trillion per year, with the potential to contribute £47 billion to UK GVA through domestic supply and exports while supporting up to 97,000 jobs.
The coastline off the North East of England has a technical potential of 72 GW of offshore wind, with over half of that deemed deepwater and likely to require floating or adjacent technologies. If we can solve the challenges to make those deepwater projects investible, it could unlock a £100bn private investment opportunity for our region.
He went on to say “However, deep water offshore wind projects will only progress enabling their economic benefits and green jobs if these projects can be delivered reliably and economically. That requires the sector’s shared challenges to be addressed through open collaboration and innovation.”
An Inclusive Forum for Industry-Wide Discussion
The Open Innovation Day was an inclusive forum where all elements of the value chain had a voice, including major developers, design consultancies, OEMs, technology innovators and investors.
A consistent message emerged from the developers and consultants in the room, including GB Energy, JERA Nex bp, Equinor and Apollo. They described the growing challenge facing project teams: with more than 140 different deep-water floating platform concepts currently under consideration globally, the number of possible combinations of floaters, mooring systems and anchors has become vast. Down selection to a single design for detailed engineering and construction has become overwhelming, introducing risk at the very earliest stages of project development.
From Complexity to Clarity: Launching KOMET
The discussion around the number of floating platform concepts provided a natural lead-in to the launch of KOMET — the Kinewell Offshore Mooring Evaluation Tool.
KOMET is a web-based concept-screening platform built specifically for deeper water offshore wind projects. It enables developers, consultants and OEMs to quickly evaluate and compare combinations of floaters, mooring lines, anchors and installation vessels before detailed structural analysis begins.
By modelling lifetime costs, installation campaign durations and system robustness at an early stage, KOMET helps engineers narrow down viable configurations, reduce uncertainty, and focus engineering effort where it delivers the greatest impact.
Dr Henna Bains, Chief Technology Officer at Kinewell, said:
“What we heard throughout the day was a shared challenge: there are now so many floating concepts and design permutations that early-stage decision-making has become overwhelming.
KOMET is designed to bring clarity to that complexity. It allows teams to explore options rapidly, understand trade-offs transparently, and move forward with confidence. If we collaborate and get this right, the prize for the UK and the global industry is enormous.”
KOMET was developed as part of the £10m Technology, Innovation & Green Growth for Offshore Renewables (TIGGOR) programme, funded by the North East Combined Authority (NECA) and delivered by Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult. The Open Innovation Day provided a vehicle for demonstrating new technologies like KOMET developed through the TIGGOR programme.
A Sector With Confidence
Beyond the technical discussion, attendees at the full-day event commented on the strong sense of momentum in the room.
Hosting the event in Blyth underlined the North East’s growing role in offshore wind innovation, with its combination of port infrastructure, engineering expertise, research capability, testing facilities, and funding commitments made by NECA through interventions like TIGGOR, positioning the region as a key contributor to the UK’s floating wind ambitions.
For more information about KOMET, visit www.kinewell.co.uk
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