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Italy’s Prysmian Group reports that it has been awarded a major grid connection project, DolWin5, worth some €140 million, from Dutch-German grid operator TenneT.

A press release said that the TenneT project will connect multiple offshore wind farms to the German grid. It calls for “the supply, installation and commissioning of a High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) 320 kV XLPE-insulated submarine and land power cable connection, with a transmission capacity of 900 MW, as well as the associated fibre optic cable system, comprising a land route of 30 km and a subsea route of 100 km.” The turnkey connections will link the offshore converter platform DolWin epsilon, located some 100 km offshore in the German North Sea, to the mainland Emden/Ost converter station, and help transmit the generated renewable energy into the German grid.

The cables will be manufactured at Prysmian Group’s plants in Pikkala, Finland, submarine, and Gron, France, land, the release said. Offshore installation activities will be performed by two Prysmian cable-laying vessels: the Cable Enterprise, for deep water installation, and the Ulisse, for shallow water activities. Completion of the project is scheduled for the middle of 2024.

“The Dolwin5 project continues our valued long relationship with the major TSO TenneT and demonstrates our ability to provide tailor-made submarine cable solutions for challenging projects, providing the offshore infrastructure needed to support the growth of clean energy in Northern Europe,” said Hakan Ozmen, EVP Projects, Prysmian Group.

The release said that the project comes “at a very important time for Prysmian,” which recently won a €200 million U.S. offshore project from Vineyard Wind, LLC.

NEC has won a contract from Okinawa Cellular Telephone Company to supply an optical submarine cable system connecting Okinawa Prefecture and Kagoshima Prefecture in Japan to be in operation in April 2020. 

A press release said that NEC will provide the optical submarine cable system as a turnkey solution. The cable will be manufactured by NEC’s subsidiary OCC Corporation, which it noted is the only company in Japan that can make optical submarine cables capable of withstanding the water pressure from 8,000 m deep seas.

The cable system will be connected to Nago City, Okinawa Prefecture, and Hioki City, Kagoshima Prefecture, with a total length of approximately 760 km and at a maximum depth of approximately 1,200 m. The system will employ the latest optical wavelength multiplex transmission method, with maximum design transmission capacity of 80 Tbps.

NEC, as a system integrator, will provides all aspects of submarine cable operations, including the optical transmission terminal stations, optical submarine repeaters, optical submarine cables, ocean surveys and route designs, installation of equipment and cable, and training and delivery testing.

Nexans reports that it has been awarded a turnkey contract worth more than 100 million euros for a submarine cable link to reinforce the national grid of the Philippines.

A press release said that the order is from the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), which is looking to unify and reinforce the national grid with the launch of the Mindanao Visayas Interconnection Project (MVIP). The goal is connect the three power grids of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao into one unified national grid by 2020.

The release said that Nexans will provide 350 kV high-voltage direct current (HVDC) mass-impregnated (MI) submarine cable in water depths up to 650 m for the submarine link. To optimize the delivery of the submarine cabling system for the MVIP, Nexans will leverage its global manufacturing footprint. The 350 kV submarine MI cable will be manufactured in Nexans’ Nippon High Voltage Cable Corporation plant in Futtsu, Japan, as well as in its Halden plant in Norway. The installation and protection works will be performed by Nexans’ cable laying vessel, the C/S Nexans Skagerrak.

"Nexans is delighted to once again be trusted by NGCP, building on a number of projects the Group has successfully completed in the region," said Vincent Dessale, Senior Executive Vice President Nexans Subsea and Land Systems Business Group.

Per the release, in the last 15 years, power consumption in Philippines has increased by almost 80%, with 2017 use estimated at more than 94,370 GWh

An epic Canadian project that took nearly four years of engineering, manufacturing, installation and testing has been completed, and Nexans reports that it has completed its contract to supply the longest submarine power cables in North America.

A press release said that the two 200 kV mass impregnated (MI) HVDC cables, each 170-km long and weighing approximately 5,500 tons, are part of the Maritime Link Project conducted by NSP Maritime Link Inc. (NSPML), an indirect subsidiary of Emera Inc. The 175 million euro contract also includes some 50 km of overland transmission cables in Nova Scotia and close to another 300 km cables of overland transmission on the island of Newfoundland. The cables were manufactured at Nexans’ factories in Halden, Norway, and in Futtsu, Japan.

Nexans installed the submarine cables in the Cabot Strait to a depth of approximately 470 meters, protecting them on the seabed and electrically interconnecting the provinces of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador for the first time. The final high-voltage tests were successfully conducted on the link in September 2017.

“We are thrilled to be part of this exciting project and we are happy to have completed the installation of these two submarine cables, the longest in Northern America, after almost 600,000 hours of designing, manufacturing and laying works,” said Nexans Project Manager Geir Korstad. “This success is undoubtedly the result of hard work and dedication of our highly-competent Nexans teams as well as the seamless cooperation with NSPML and our partners.”

The release described the Maritime Link Project as a new 500 MW (+/- 200 kV) HVDC interconnection that consists of converter stations and associated high-voltage alternating current (HVAC) switchyards as well as two HVDC transmission lines, a 230 kV HVAC transmission line, and associated infrastructure. The Maritime Link Project began in 2011. The project, it said, is part of efforts for Canada, which gets two-thirds of its electricity from renewable resources, to reduce its coal emissions by 50% by 2030. It will also enable Nova Scotia to meet regulations requiring 40% renewable energy by 2020.

TE SubCom and the Samoa Submarine Cable Company (SSCC) announced that a new submarine cable depot will be built in the Port of Apia, Samoa to service and maintain more than 20 cable systems in the South Pacific region.

In 2017, TE SubCom was awarded the South Pacific Marine Maintenance Agreement (SPMMA), a five-year service agreement between it and 15 cable operators in the region, a press release said. The new depot, to be owned by TE SubCom, will help the company “support and maintain the more than 51,000 km of telecom and power cable systems in the area, as well as support regional installation activities. The SPMMA area covers the South Pacific region from Singapore in the west to Tahiti in the east and from the southernmost point of New Zealand to Hawaii in the north.

The Prysmian Group announced that it has been awarded a contract worth approximately €40 million for a new submarine cable connection between the isle of Capri and Sorrento (Naples) from an Italian transmission system operator.

A press release said that the contract, from Rete Italia SpA, a business of Terna SpA, calls for the turn-key installation of an HVAC 150 kV power cable link between the power stations located in Sorrento and on Capri’s Gasto ecological island, following a 16-km submarine and 3-km land route. The Capri-Sorrento cables will be manufactured at Prysmian’s plant in Arco Felice (Naples), with cable laying done by the Prysmian vessel, "Cable Enterprise." Prysmian will provide all the related network components and required specialist civil engineering works.

The project, which is scheduled for completion in 2019, follows a prior related contract from Terna, the release said. In 2013, Prysmian was chosen to be cable supplier for the Capri-Torre Annunziata project, a HVAC 150 kV submarine cable connection between Capri and the mainland that was approximately 31 km in length.

"It is a source of great satisfaction and pride to be involved in the creation of infrastructure of such strategic importance and prestige for Italy," said Massimo Battaini, senior vice president of energy projects for the Prysmian Group. The second power link will complete the Capri connection ring, increasing the efficiency and reliability of the island’s power system.

The Prysmian Group notes that it has completed a number of important infrastructure projects in the Mediterranean Basin, such as the SA.PE.I. connections (Sardinia-Italian mainland), Sorgente-Rizziconi (Sicily-Calabria), and Capri-Torre Annunziata in Italy; Spain-Morocco, Iberian Peninsula-Mallorca, Mallorca-Ibiza in Spain; and the recently completed longest connection of the Cyclades submarine ring in Greece.

 Xtera®, a U.S. provider of subsea fiber optic solutions, reports that it has been selected as the supplier of the ARBR submarine fiber optic cable system being developed jointly by Seaborn Networks and the Werthein Group.

A press release said that the 2,700 km open system, 4-fiber pair, 48Tbps, direct PoP-to-PoP subsea cable will connect Argentina and Brazil. The ARBR subsea cable system will allow for direct onward connectivity to New York, via the Seabras-1 system, thereby providing a lower latency route between the commercial and financial centers of Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and New York.  The ARBR cable is fully funded. It said.

“This award further consolidates Xtera's position as a strong player in the regional submarine market segment and is a significant endorsement of Xtera's differentiated product offering," said Xtera Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer Stuart Barnes.  "Our four pillars of product and service offerings encompass subsea systems technologies, wet and dry upgrades, IP licensing, and OEM / specialist units to selected markets."

The company notes that it offers un-repeatered and repeatered subsea connectivity, using the highest bandwidth undersea amplifiers for up to 40 Terabits on a single fiber pair. 

The Prysmian Group announced that it has been awarded a contract by Cobra Wind International Ltd. to provide the cable system to connect the Kincardine Floating Offshore Wind Farm to mainland U.K.

A press release said that the order, Prysmian’s first cable project for a floating offshore wind farm, calls for the design and supply of two export cables as well as inter-array cables and associated accessories to connect the turbines. The Kincardine Wind Farm, is some 15 km southeast of Aberdeen, to the Scottish mainland power grid.

Each of the continuous export cables will serve the 17 km route, using a static cable design combined with a 0.5 km dynamic cable route section to complete the connection to the floating turbine tower. The 33 kV three-core submarine cable will use EPR insulation system, with the static section length finished with single wire armoring, while the dynamic section will employ a double-wire armored design. The submarine cables will be produced at the Group plants in Vilanova, Spain, and Drammen, Norway. Installation is planned during 2018 and 2019.

The Kincardine project is planned to be built in two stages. A single turbine 2 MW first phase is scheduled to be installed this year, followed by a six-turbine second phase with hardware of up to 8.4 MW each. The first phase will consist of a Vestas V80 2 MW machine with a 106-meter tip height and 80-meter rotor diameter.

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