This subsea cable maker is going to deliver 6 GW of offshore wind energy - Electrek.co
This subsea cable maker is going to deliver 6 GW of offshore wind energy
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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Related Knowledge Center: Offshore wind energy
Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.