Nexans to lay €100m cable

has been awarded a €100m contract by the

(ADWEA) to supply and install submarine and land cables.

The cables will create a new 132kV power link between Abu Dhabi’s mainland network and Delma Island.

The 45km2 Delma Island is located in the extreme west of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), approximately 30km offshore in the Arabian Gulf. The new power link will provide an additional 100MW of electricity to meet the growing demand of the islands’ 10,000 residents.

The Island’s new power supply will be taken from Shuweihat power station on the Abu Dhabi mainland, where a new 220/132kV substation will be established. From there it will be transmitted through two circuits of Nexans’ single core XLPE (crosslinked polyethylene) underground cables and two three-core XLPE submarine cables. The power supply will connect to the existing 11kV network through a new 132/11kV substation on Delma Island.

Nexans will commence the project by carrying out a mobilisation and route survey for the submarine cables over a route length of 40.5km. It will then supply and install two three-core 132kV XLPE cables with a cross-section of 300 mm2; a total length of 81km of cable, together with fibre optic cables for the control and monitoring of both circuits. This is the longest single length, three-core 132 kV XLPE cable ever delivered by Nexans.

The waters of the Arabian Gulf are notoriously rough in this region, so the cables will be buried in trenches to provide additional protection.

Nexans is also supplying 50km of single core 132kV XLPE cable for the two land cable sections of the project, each comprising two circuits of three cables. These sections are Shuwaihat to shore, a route length of 1.58km and shore to Delma island substation, a route length of 6.75km.

The cables will be manufactured at Nexans’ Halden plant in Norway. The project is due to be completed by the end of 2008.