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Wave Hub cable floated ashore at Hayle
23 August 2010
Engineers working to install the South West RDA’s (Regional
Development Agency) pioneering Wave Hub marine energy project have
successfully brought the end of the subsea cable ashore at Hayle on
the north coast of Cornwall.
The operation involved the use of more than 400 buoys to float a
1,800 metre stretch of cable weighing around 90 tonnes. The end of
the cable was pulled to the top of the beach at around 5am on
Monday (August 23), where it will be joined to onshore cables
linked to a new electricity sub-station.
The operation had been delayed by technical issues when the
cable lost buoyancy on two previous attempts. Cable laying
contractor CTC Marine devised a different method, using a
combination of pillow floats and A5 buoys.
The operation restarted on Sunday following modifications to the
cable laying ship Nordica at the A&P Falmouth shipyard on the
south coast of Cornwall.
Guy Lavender, the South West RDA’s Wave Hub general manager,
said: “This was a critical milestone for Wave Hub and a great
relief to see the cable brought safely ashore, but it’s just the
first stage of the deployment operation. The next steps involve
burying the cable on the beach and connecting it to the onshore
cabling already in place, while the Nordica starts heading for the
Wave Hub site offshore, laying the rest of the cable as she goes.
All of that will take several days.”
The 20 megawatt Wave Hub is creating the world’s largest test
site for wave energy technology by building a grid-connected socket
on the seabed, 16 kilometres off the coast of Cornwall in South
West England, to which wave power devices can be connected and
their performance evaluated.
The £42 million project has been developed by the South West RDA
and is a cornerstone of its strategy to develop a world class
marine energy industry in South West England.
Wave Hub is connected to the shore via a 25km, 1,300-tonne
subsea cable that can carry 33,000 volts. It has been manufactured
in one continuous length and is made up of six copper cores, 48
fibre optic cables, two layers of steel wire armouring and an outer
polymer sheath. It is 16 centimetres in diameter.
The cable is being buried on the beach to a depth of around two
metres using a special machine that blasts a trench in the sand
using high pressure water jets. The machine will continue offshore
for a distance of two kilometres. Thereafter a bigger trenching
machine will take over for a further five kilometres and from there
the cable will be held in place by rocks as the seabed it too hard
to trench.
Once the cable has been laid offshore and the Nordica has
reached the Wave Hub site, the 12-tonne hub will be lowered to the
seabed in about 50 metres of water.
In the autumn Wave Hub will undergo a series of tests in
preparation for welcoming its first wave energy devices next
year.
Wave Hub is being funded with £12.5 million from the South West
RDA, £20 million from the European Regional Development Fund
Convergence Programme and £9.5 million from the UK
government.
Ends
For more information contact Jason Clark, on 07980-834368 or
via
jason.clark@dca-pr.co.uk
Notes to Editors
Images: Show the South West RDA’s Wave Hub general manager Guy
Lavender on the beach at Hayle in Cornwall with Wave Hub’s subsea
cable stretching out to sea.
Film: of Wave Hub and the subsea cable under construction is
available here: www.youtube.com/southwestrda
You can follow Wave Hub’s progress on Twitter (@wavehub).
The South West RDA works for and promotes a modern, stronger and
more resilient economy across South West England. Our work involves
creating better jobs, successful businesses, more prosperous
cities, towns and villages within an economy that uses less carbon
and will still be thriving in 20, 50 and 100 years time.
Wave Hub is a major marine renewables infrastructure project
that will create an electrical ‘socket’ on the seabed in some 50
metres of water around 16kms (10 miles) off the coast of Cornwall
in South West England and connected to the National Grid via a
subsea cable. Groups of wave energy devices will be connected to
Wave Hub and float on or just below the surface of the sea to
assess how well they work and how much power they generate before
being commercially produced and deployed. There are four berths
available at Wave Hub, each covering two square kilometres. Wave
Hub will have an initial maximum capacity of 20MW (enough
electricity to power approximately 7,000 homes) but has been
designed with the potential to scale up to 50MW in the future. The
first wave energy devices are expected to be deployed in 2011.
Legal agreements have been signed with leading renewable energy
company Ocean Power Technologies Limited to take the first berth at
Wave Hub using its PowerBuoy wave energy converter. Images of
PowerBuoy can be downloaded at www.flickr.com/photos/southwestengland.
Discussions are ongoing with other device developers.
JDR Cable Systems Ltd has manufactured the armoured 25 km (16
mile) 33,000 volt cable and hub assembly for Wave Hub at its
factory in Hartlepool in a contract worth £7.6 million. The cable
has been made in one continuous length and is made up of six copper
cores, 48 fibre optic cables, two layers of steel wire armouring
and an outer polymer sheath. It is 16 centimetres in diameter and
weighs 1,300 tonnes. The hub weighs around 12 tonnes and will sit
on the seabed. It will split the main cable linking it to the
National Grid on shore into four 300m cable ‘tails’ to which groups
of wave energy devices can be attached and monitored for how they
perform. CTC Marine Projects is carrying out the installation of
the hub and subsea cable on the seabed in a contract worth around
£7 million.
Powermann Ltd of Poole in Dorset has been appointed to handle
the £1 million onshore electrical works that will connect Wave Hub
to the UK’s National Grid network, and a new electricity
sub-station at Hayle has been built by Dawnus Construction.
In Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly the Convergence Programmes
are made up of European Regional Development Fund (£347 million)
and European Social Fund (£153 million). Convergence Programmes
will run until 2013 and follow the successful Objective One
Programme and prior to that Objective 5b. For further information
see: www.convergencecornwall.com.