Nexans has been awarded a €50m contract by Centrica to design, manufacture and supply the high voltage (HV) subsea power export cables for the Lincs wind farm project. The new wind farm is being constructed eight kilometres off the coast of England, to the east of Skegness in the county of Lincolnshire.
The Lincs power export cable contract comprises the design, manufacture and supply of two 145 kV XLPE subsea power cables to be laid in parallel, each 50 km in length, that will connect the wind farm to the existing National Grid substation at Walpole, North Norfolk. Each cable will comprise three copper cores with a conductor cross-section of 630mm². Jointed at the factory, the cross-section of the copper conductors will be increased to 1.200mm² for the landfall section to accommodate less favourable ambient conditions. The cables will be delivered, during 2011, in single continuous lengths from Nexans' factory located in Halden, Norway and they will incorporate fibre optic elements manufactured at the Nexans plant based in Rognan, Norway.
"This latest major project continues our relationship with Centrica on the UK's wind farm programme", says Yvon Raak, senior corporate executive vice president. "It follows the success of cables we supplied for the Lynn & Inner Dowsing wind farms that came on line in 2008 in the same general area as Lincs".
Lincs is the first of Centrica's ‘Round 2' projects (as classified by the UK Crown Estates' Round 2 plan laid out in 2003 for constructing offshore wind farms in the UK) to receive planning consent in the Greater Wash, a strategic area designated by Government in 2002 for further offshore development on a larger scale. It will be capable of generating sufficient power to meet the annual demand of 200,000 households, significantly reducing emissions of carbon dioxide.
