Cablel® Hellenic Cables announced that it has been awarded part of an R&D tender for a Floating Wind Joint Industry Project (Floating Wind) focused on the development of high-voltage dynamic export cables for the transmission of power from floating wind farms to shore

A press release said that the project, under the auspices of Carbon Trust, is a collaborative initiative between industry partners EnBW, ENGIE, Eolfi, E.ON, Equinor, innogy, Kyuden Mirai Energy, Ørsted, ScottishPower Renewables, Shell, Vattenfall and Wpd, with support from the Scottish government. The goal is to develop commercial-scale floating wind farms, with this R&D effort representing a new technology that is a critical factor for the commercial deployment of floating wind technology.

“For this purpose, Hellenic Cables will support the design, initial testing and development of dynamic cables ranging from 130kV to 250kV to enable the efficient transmission of power from floating wind turbines to shore,” the release said. The award for the company is for the first phase of the project, due for completion in March 2020.

The cables will be made at the plant of Fulgor SA, a subsidiary of Hellenic Cables, at its plant in Soussaki, Corinth, Greece, where Fulgor is capable of making some of the world’s longest submarine cables in continuous lengths. Cablel Hellenic Cables, which is part of Belgium’s Cenergy Holdings SA, manufactures power and telecom cables as well as submarine cables. It has four plants in Greece and one in Bulgaria.

Last November, Cablel Hellenic Cables won a contract worth some 29 million euros and Fulgor a contract worth some 18 million euros to provide and install submarine and land cables in the Rio-Antirrio area for the extension of the 400kV grid towards Peloponnese, Greece. Those projects called for 18 km of six 400kV single-core submarine cables and optical fiber submarine cables, and some 42 km of 400 kV land cables for the route from the landing points of the submarine cables in Peloponnese and Central Greece.