wiredInUSA March 2019

Nordic connections

New export cable in prospect

Photo by Nicolas J Leclercq on Unsplash

Iceland’s Telecommunications Fund and Farice ehf, an Icelandic international capacity provider, have announced plans to build a new subsea cable system linking Iceland to Europe. Called IRIS, the new route will connect Iceland to Ireland with potential branches and onwards connections to existing infrastructure such as Aqua Comms’ AEC-1 andAEC-2, and Farice-1 andDanice. Under the terms of the agreement, Farice will carry out the desktop study and research necessary for the construction of the new system, including mapping landing sites and project managing the seabed survey. Farice operates two other cable systems: the Farice-1 cable that links east coast Iceland to the Faroe Islands and Scotland, and Danice, which connects the south coast of Iceland to Denmark. Iceland’s 4,800km Greenland Connect is the country’s third cable system linking Iceland to Canada and the US. This latest Iceland to Europe system will be the country’s fourth and will further improve the country’s security and resiliency.

Image: inchcapewind.com

NKT has signed a pre-construction agreement (PCA) for delivery and installation of an export cable system for Inch Cape, a prospective UK offshore wind farm project. The project is being developed by Inch Cape Offshore Wind Farm Ltd, and the PCA, which is for a consortium that includes Boskalis Subsea Cables and Flexibles, is for exclusive supplier and installer for the export cable. The project will require approximately 170km of 220kV AC offshore export cables, to be made at one of NKT’s two high voltage power cable plants and installed by Boskalis. Construction on the wind farm, situated in the North Sea about 15 miles off the east coast of Scotland, is planned to start in 2020, with cable installation in 2022. A network of low voltage cables will connect the wind turbines to offshore substation platforms. Up to two of the platforms will collect the generated electricity for export to the national grid via cables that come ashore at Cockenzie, in East Lothian.

wiredInUSA - March 2019

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