Cable-laying vessel comes to play its part in empowering New York’s $6 billion renewable power HVDC link

One of the vessels, provided by Greece’s Asso.subsea and designed for cable laying and protection works in shallow waters, has arrived in New York for its subsea high-voltage direct current (HVDC) cable assignment at the Big Apple’s $6 billion clean energy transmission project to link the Canadian border and the City that Never Sleeps.

According to COSCO SHIPPING Heavy Transport (COSCOHT), the Kang Sheng Kou (KSK) semi-submersible heavy lift vessel has completed the transportation of the Atalanti cable laying vessel (CLV) from Karlskrona, Sweden to New York, United States.

The vessel will now embark on a contract that Asso.subsea signed with NKT for the transportation, installation, and burial of a 400 kV DC submarine cable system along a portion of the Hudson River, as a part of the Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) project, developed by TDI-USA Holdings.

Furthermore, the Hudson scope will consist of two bundled HVDC cables laid and buried along a submarine route of more than 85 miles or 140 km, encompassing shallow water areas, strong currents, numerous crossings of existing utilities, and various riverbed conditions.

The Greek player plans to utilize the full capacity of its cable-laying fleet for the project, including the DP2 Atalanti and the DP3 Ariadne cable-laying ships, in addition to the DP2 Astrea support vessel. The marine operations, scheduled to begin in Q2 2024 and conclude by Q4 2025, will help bring to life the renewable power transmission project that will deliver clean energy from Hydro-Quebec in Canada to New York City (NYC).

Envisioned to transmit power from the Canadian border to New York, through a 339-mile-long (around 545 kilometers) subsea HVDC cable, providing renewable energy to more than 1 million homes in New York, CHPE will transfer up to 1.25 GW of electricity for more than 600 kilometers underground from Hertel, Canada, through Lake Champlain and the Hudson River, to an HVDC converter station in Astoria, Queens.

After NKT was put in charge of the engineering, manufacturing, and installation of the high-voltage 400 kV DC transmission line in the summer of 2022, it picked DeepOcean for management, engineering, and installation of subsea mattresses along the Hudson River in New York with the first campaign getting wrapped up in April 2024.

While Hitachi Energy is the supplier of the HVDC converter station with Light technology, the lead contractor for the site is Kiewit Corporation. The $6 billion 60% submarine and 40% underground HVDC transmission project is slated to bring 1.25 GW of clean, renewable power from Canada to Queens by Spring 2026.

This renewable energy solution for NYC is expected to lend a helping hand in meeting ambitious climate targets, thus, high expectations are being placed on the CHPE’s role in the state’s energy transformation, accelerating progress to achieve the Big Apple’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) goal to obtain 70% of electricity statewide from renewable sources by 2030 on the path to a zero-emission grid.

The project is expected to curb CO2 emissions by an average of 3.9 million metric tons annually – equivalent to removing 44% of passenger vehicles from Gotham. The developer claims that the fully buried Champlain Hudson Power Express transmission line is ready to power New Yorkers into the future with clean, renewable hydropower, as it has been constructed in anticipation of the Empire State’s transition from fossil fuel to clean energy.

After the project becomes fully operational in less than two years from now, it will feed low-cost renewable power directly into the New York Metro area. Once the CLV Atalanti’s campaign is complete, COSCO’s KSK will return to New York to transport the cable layer to its next destination.