Marlinks to Monitor Northwester 2 Burial Depth of Cables

Marlinks has secured a contract from Northwester 2 and Nexans to monitor the burial depth of six infield cables and one export cable of the Northwester 2 offshore wind farm in Belgium.

Both the export and infield cables will be equipped with Marlinks’ distributed temperature sensing (DTS) measurement system.

The system uses the recorded temperatures and the soil conditions to continuously calculate power circuit ratings and burial depth of the cables allowing an accurate follow-up on risk for failure, the company explained.

The hardware will be installed on the substation in May 2019 and the system will be fully operational when all the cables are installed in October 2019.

Nexans supplies the export cable whereas NSW will manufacture the infield cables for the Northwester 2 project.

The 219MW Northwester 2 project is located approximately 51 kilometers off the Belgian coast and is scheduled to be fully operational in 2020.

Peter Caluwaerts, project director of Northwester 2, said: “One of the challenges over the lifetime of an offshore wind farm in the Belgian concession zone is to monitor and maintain correct burial depth of the cables. Marlinks provides an innovative monitoring solution allowing for up to date risk assessment.”