A North Shields tech firm has been awarded a key contract in South Korea.

Blue Wind Engineering has awarded Kinewell Energy, based on Jackson Street, a contract for the optimisation of substation location and the cable route for the 600MW Wando-Guemil Offshore Wind Farm.

The huge project is located in South-West Korea and is being developed by KEON, supported by Dohwa and Blue Wind Engineering. Kinewell Energy is being asked to leverage its unique artificial intelligence-based cable-layout optimisation technology called KLOC, which rapidly designs a cable layout, taking inmtop account capital costs, operational costs and electrical distribution losses.

Dr Andrew Jenkins, CEO and Founder of Kinewell Energy, said: “We are delighted to have been selected by Blue Wind Engineering to support them on this exciting project. Our technology will help maximise the value of the project, through optimising both the substation location and the inter-array cable system.”

Dr Jone Oh, CEO of Blue Wind Engineering, said: “We are looking forward to working with the Kinewell Energy team on this project, and the value-added they bring through their KLOC technology.”

The Northern Echo: The Kinewell tech in actionThe Kinewell tech in action (Image: Press release)

The contract follows the global launch of Kinewell Energy's software at the Global Offshore Wind conference in the summer of 2022. The company had developed it with a share of £3.5m in match funding from the North of Tyne Combined Authority’s TIGGOR programme delivered by the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult.

Read next:

Dr Jenkins added: “This contract is testament to the success of our team delivering on the objectives of TIGGOR; creating highly innovative green jobs to develop new technology right here in the North East and exporting our world leading capabilities all over the globe.”

Kinewell Energy is a rapidly growing company and has a successful history of delivering both inter-array optimisation consultancy and KLOC licensing to the European, Japanese, US, South Korean and Chinese offshore wind markets. The team have experience of delivering over 13.1 GW of offshore wind cable layout optimisation projects, in addition to those projects undertaken by clients under licence.