Pharos Offshore Group says it has completed the repair of a section of damaged subsea export cable at the London Array Offshore Wind Farm.
The British company provided the engineering, fabrication and operational teams to locate, recover, re-lay and re-bury the power cable off the Kent coast. The 800 square-millimeter HVDC export cable has a 218 mm diameter and weighs over 50kg/m in water and 86 kg/m in air.
According to Pharos, tools for properly handling the cable did not exist in the market, and standard grapnel operations were not possible due to nearby cable routes. In addition, the Pharos team also converted a conventional telecoms cable ship to accommodate the loading, storage, lay, splicing and safe handling of the product, the company explains.
"To our knowledge, this is the first diver-less operation to de-bury, retrieve and repair a cable of this size and weight," says Phil Walker, Pharos' CEO.
The project is being developed by London Array Ltd., a consortium comprising DONG Energy, E.ON and Masdar. Once completed, the project’s 175 turbines will generate enough electricity to power over 470,000 U.K. homes, according to the companies.
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