Dutch sub-sea services provider N-Sea Group has secured a contract to carry out a critical export cable repair at the Gwynt y Môr offshore wind farm, located in the Irish Sea off the coast of Wales.
The project involves replacing a 5km section of a 132kV export cable, stretching from the onshore transition joint bay out toward the offshore platform.
A key element of the operation will be the use of horizontal directional drilling (HDD), allowing the new cable to be pulled ashore under a railway line, minimising environmental disruption and logistical complexity at the landfall site. The shore approach will also involve careful dredging, followed by jointing, testing and burial of the new cable.
This is the third cable repair N-Sea has undertaken for this client, and the company will again leverage its in-house survey, UXO (Unexploded Ordnance) and data centre teams to engineer a new sub-sea route and provide detailed as-built data once the campaign is complete.
The repair work, scheduled to take place in the northern hemisphere summer, will utilise N-Sea’s dedicated cable repair vessel The Curo, which is specially equipped for such missions, with an eight-point mooring system for stable positioning in high-tide environments and beaching capabilities that allow it to work as close to shore as necessary.
The Gwynt y Môr wind farm comprises 160 turbines, delivering a total capacity of 576MW since coming online in 2013. The transmission assets, including the export cables, are owned by GYM OFTO.
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