Sumitomo Electric wins cable contract for Gwynt y Môr offshore wind farm

Sumitomo Electric Industries has won a contract to supply new 132 kV offshore export cable for the Gwynt y Môr offshore wind project in the UK.

The contract award comes a few months after Ofgem ruled in favor of Gwynt y Môr OFTO plc which had filed an Exceptional Event claim for the project’s export cable failure from October 2020.

The 576 MW wind farm was put into operation in 2015, and that same year it encountered its first export cable issues.

In January last year, an O&M contractor performing a routine test discovered that all fibers within the spare fiber optic cable (FOC) within subsea export cable 3 (SSEC3) had failed. This initial FOC break was located close to the location where the repair was undertaken in 2015.

On 15 October 2020, Gwynt y Môr OFTO discovered a second break on the spare FOC within SSEC3, in whose vicinity the main power core of the cable section failed, which was located approximately 1.5 km from the initial FOC failure identified in January.

Gwynt y Môr OFTO reported the Transmission Services Reduction to Ofgem and filed the Exceptional Event claim, which Ofgem accepted this February.

Gwynt y Môr comprises 160 3.6 MW Siemens turbines and two offshore substations located some 15 km off the North Coast of Wales.

The article was updated with more information on 14 May at 10:40 am.