Prysmian Group: New award worth approximately € 230 M for offshore wind farm grid

Prysmian Group, world leader in the energy and telecom cable systems industry, has secured a new award by 50Hertz Offshore GmbH - a subsidiary of 50Hertz Transmission GmbH, transmission grid operator in Germany - worth approximately € 230 million to design, produce and install a power cable system for the offshore wind park cluster West of Adlergrund in the German Baltic Sea.

The award comes as a result of 50Hertz exercising an option for a further grid connection already provided for in the existing contract for the West of Adlergrund project - that was originally worth € 480 million effective immediately with options for further grid connections to be activated separately - when secured by Prysmian in May 2014.

The project scope comprises the design, supply and installation of multiple high voltage submarine cable systems, now including this additional connection, between planned Offshore Wind Parks, approximately 40 km north-east of the island of Ruegen, to the Lubmin substation in North East Germany (and consequently with the mainland electricity grid) along a route of approximately 90 km (submarine) and 3 km (land).

The 220 kV HVAC (High Voltage Alternate Current) 3-core extruded cables (including fibre optic cable system) will be produced in the Group's centres of technological and manufacturing excellence for submarine cables in Pikkala (Finland) and Arco Felice (Naples, Italy), which have recently been upgraded to be fully equipped to manufacture and test large cross-section 3-core cables up to 400 kV AC. The production of the West of Adlergrund cable systems has already started and installation operations are scheduled to begin in 2015.

Marine cable laying will be performed using the Group’s DP2 ship Cable Enterprise specifically geared to use her particular expertise in offshore wind farm connections in the best way to serve the growing markets in Northern Europe and to provide highly complex installation solutions. The vessel has been newly upgraded and converted from dumb barge to self-propelled DP2 vessel able to operate in very shallow waters.

“This award reconfirms Prysmian’s undisputed leadership in the submarine cable systems industry as a truly reliable and dedicated partner in the execution of turn-key complex projects” stated Massimo Battaini, Prysmian Group’s Senior Vice President Energy Projects. “The activation of this option is a tangible sign of the Group’s strong and acknowledged reputation and of the trust of the market”, he added.

In Germany, in particular, the country with one of the largest renewable energy development programme, the Group has recently announced the successful commissioning and hand over of two HVDC offshore grid connections (BorWin2 and HelWin1). A further two DC offshore grid connection projects, SylWin1 and HelWin2, are near completion and are scheduled to take up commercial operation within the first half of 2015. Prysmian is currently implementing also the HVDC cable systems for the DolWin3 and BorWin3 projects.