Security by terrorist attacks of Polish offshore wind farms

Potential threats to offshore wind farms, their methods of protection and the legal aspects of the safety of these facilities are the subject of an analysis of "The protection of energy infrastructure in terms of the development of offshore wind energy in the maritime areas of Poland" by kmdr Lt. Tomasz Chyła, expert of the Ignacy Łukasiewicz Energy Policy Institute in Rzeszów.

PGE plans to build up to 2040 offshore wind farms with a total capacity of 6.5 GW, while Orlen has a concession to build a farm with a capacity of up to 1.2 GW, whose construction would have ended in 2026. Depending on the investor, they will be located between 23 and 80 km from the shore, which is often outside the line of the radiolocation or optical horizon.

The location of these facilities affecting the extended response time of the authorities responsible for the security of the State causes that after the launch they may become the target of acts of a terrorist nature. The wide range of possible activities and complexity of the marine environment makes offshore offshore offshore offshore offshore critical infrastructure extremely difficult to protect and protect against possible attacks destabilising work.

Easy access to components for the construction of an unmanned aircraft with a large range and load capacity (or the use of a commercial unit such as a scooter, a yacht or a motorboat as a drone launch platform), as well as increasing availability of ROV-type vehicles (remotely driven submarines) operating in a water tone that can make a diversion act, allows to assume that the transfer of explosive load in the wind turbine area or underwater cables is an increasingly likely scenario.
kmdr Lt. mgr inż. Tomasz Chły

The analysis shall include a description of the protection of offshore wind farms against operations using aerial drones. It also discusses the full legal framework for the safety of offshore wind farms. It follows, among other things, that operators of offshore wind farms will have to implement technical solutions in the field of monitoring of the farm in the water (as well as overhead) and underwater parts (after formal recognition of them as part of critical infrastructure systems).

A separate chapter of the study concerns the monitoring of the area around offshore farms. It presents both current hardware capabilities (radiations and aircraft) and solutions proposed by the author.

The analysis is written by kmdr Lt. mgr inż. Tomasz Chła, senior lecturer at the Faculty of Command and Maritime Operations at the Westerplatte Naval Academy in Gdynia, expert at the Institute of Energy Policy in Rzeszów.

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Written by Witold Szwagrun/IPE