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A better programme of co-ordination between interconnector developers in Europe is needed to manage the limited supply of subsea cable manufacturing, Balfour Beatty has warned.
Balfour Beatty’s offshore business unit director Jonathan Chapman said at a conference yesterday that one of the major barriers to interconnector deployment in Europe in the future is a shortage of cable suppliers.
He said it typically takes between a year and two years to manufacture the cable, and developers need to book a manufacturing slot “well in advance”.
Chapman said: “Developers and regulators are going to have to potentially get in the queue to book there cable supply and make sure they can get hold of that, it’s not just about global prices.
“There needs to be a better programme of co-ordination across all of these different projects rather than each developer on its own doing its own thing.”
UK interconnector projects have begun looking outside of Europe for cable manufacturing.
Japanese company J-Power Systems Corporation, a subsidiary of Sumitomo Electric Industries, was awarded the contract to manufacture 130km of subsea cable and 11.5km land cable for the Nemo link between the UK and Belgium last year.
Chapman added that interconnector developers also have to compete with other subsea projects, such as on the Western Isles in Scotland, which requires 80km of cable.
The UK currently has four interconnector links totalling 4GW, but has committed to meeting 10 per cent of the UK’s energy needs through interconnection by 2020.
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