Once operational, North Sea Link – a 1.4-Gigawatt (GW) electricity interconnector – will allow the UK to import enough clean energy to power up to 1.4 million homes.
To reach the halfway mark and lay the cable in Norway, developers had to transport materials piece by piece through a lake which cannot be accessed by the size of a regular cable-laying vessel. Hence, developers had to build their own custom-made floating platform (pictured), the first of its kind in this scale in Norway.
Construction of the platform in Suldalsvatnet, had an average of 25 people working on it daily over 11 days to allow for the start of the cable laying on the Norwegian side. Working at depths of up to 210 metres, the laying of the 2.8km parallel subsea cables was executed from a 43 x 15 metre platform, equivalent to the size of two tennis courts.
Works progress to Suldal fjords this summer
The next milestone is to lay the cable out from the fjords in Suldal, to the North Sea this summer.
Work will be carried out throughout the remainder of the year, with a view to completing the two parallel 720km cables between Cambois, Northumberland in the UK and Kvilldal, in Norway before the end of 2021.
