North Sea Link passes halfway point in Norway

North Sea Link, a joint venture project between National Grid and Norwegian system operator Statnett, is a subsea cable that will connect the UK and Norwegian electricity grids. The €2bn project, National Grid’s fifth under water electricity cable, will connect British homes into Norway’s biggest hydro-dam.

Power sharing: building the world’s longest subsea electricity interconnector

Before being able to lay the cable in Norway, the team first had to tackle manoeuvring the cable through a lake, which cannot be accessed by the size of the vessel usually required for cable laying.

Instead, the team built their own custom-made floating platform over the course of 11 days, an operation in Suldalsvatnet that marks the start of the cable laying on the Norwegian side.

Working at depths of up to 210m, the laying of the 2.8km parallel subsea cables was executed from a 43m x 15m platform.

The equipment required to lay the cable was then installed on the platform, and within 12 hours, 150 tonnes of cable were loaded on board. The platform held all the necessary equipment that is usually found on offshore cable laying vessels.