You can’t have offshore wind power without export cables, and cable maker Nexans just landed a €1.7 billion contract to deliver 2,160 km (1,342 miles) of subsea and land cables.
The Paris-based company will be working with TenneT, which is the transmission system operator for the Netherlands and a large part of Germany. Nexans has already supplied 320 kV direct current (DC) cables for TenneT’s DolWin 6 project, and it was awarded the BorWin 6 project in 2022.
Nexans is going to manufacture and install high-voltage direct current (HVDC) cables to connect three grid connection projects – BalWin 3, LanWin 4, and LanWin 2 – to connect future offshore wind farms in the German North Sea that will provide a massive 6 gigawatts (GW) of energy. The subsea cable company says that major subcontracted works will be included once the project-specific call-offs are signed.
Last year, Nexans successfully developed and tested its first 525 kV DC cable that it says enables a “substantial increase” in transmission capacity. The TenneT projects will be first in which the new, higher-capacity offshore cable technology will be deployed. Nexans is going to make them at its flagship factory in Halden, Norway.
The whole project is expected to be fully operational by 2031.
Referring to the energy crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Vincent Dessale, chief operating officer and senior executive vice president of Nexans, said of the agreement:
The uncertainty of the energy supply has again underlined the need to invest in offshore grids throughout Europe. This can only happen by creating strong and long-term partnerships between suppliers and transmission system operators – based on trust, transparency, and joint technological developments.
In the US, Nexans is providing subsea cable for the Southfork Wind, Revolution Wind, and Empire Wind offshore projects.
Read more: Everything you didn’t know you should know about subsea export cables
Photo: Nexans
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