Denmark has installed enough wind turbines that, when it blows, no other source of electric power is required—but it needs a Plan B. An undersea cable could be the solution
IMAGINE, IF YOU will, a toy boat that might fit in the palm of your hand. At mid-ship add a squat spool of sewing thread lying on its side. Scale that up about a thousand-fold and the result is the 150-metre-long. The thread in question is kilometres of high-voltage power line ready to be deployed from the aft of the ship across the sea floor. Each cable, weighing a hefty 150kg per metre and thick as a tree trunk, is a woven mix of aluminium, steel, lead and insulating material.
Either way, cables are needed, and boats to lay some of them. The potential is vast. Just 4.3% of power generated in 2018 by members of the OECD, a club of industrialised countries, was exported, up from 2% in the 1970s but a far cry from a fungible commodity like oil.Nexans Aurora That prospect means such interconnections are surging. Europe is the new frontier of cable-laying. Electrification, notably through renewables, is a key plank ofto reach “net zero” emissions by 2050. National grids have been compelled by EU rules to integrate into a single network, often backed with public cash. The continent’s scraggy coastline means lots of wind power—and also the opportunity to deploy electric cables at sea, away from where anyone might object to them being laid.
Advances in undersea cable-laying have helped open up the prospect of new and novel interconnections. Whereas previous generations of ships risked tipping over if sending wires much below 1,200 metres, the Nexans Aurora and a flotilla of similar ships from its rivals can lay wires at depths of 3,000 metres. That opens up the Mediterranean. This week thewas preparing to deploy her first cable, connecting the island of Crete to the Greek mainland.
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