Power Cable Installation

DEME’s subsidiary Tideway has the specialised knowledge, experience and techniques that are required for the installation of high voltage marine power cables. Tideway manages the complete installation process, including route preparation, pre-lay dredging, trenching, cable laying and the protection of crossings and construction of landfalls.

Tideway has worked on several world firsts in the power cable installation field. The company laid the 576 km high voltage NorNed power cable between Norway and the Netherlands, which has 
a world record length. And in an equally challenging project, Tideway installed a power cable from the Thornton far-shore wind farm to the continent and laid the infield cables between the turbines. Given the distance from the coast, the depth of the sea at the wind farm and the complexity of fairways, pipelines and telecom/power cables that had to be crossed, this was an extremely complex and pioneering project.

Tideway is and has also been involved in many sea-crossing projects that link oil or gas producing sites with consuming countries including Europipe, Zeepipe, Interconnector, Medgaz, Nordstream, Bluestream and Greenstream.

Interconnecting power cables too, is a core specialist of Tideway. Just like NorNed linking the Norwegian and Dutch national grids, BritNed will link the electrical power grids of Great Britain and the Netherlands across the North Sea.

For the client, it is an advantage to rely on a full service provider like Tideway. At the Thornton project, Tideway and DEME were responsible for all marine and offshore activities, providing a single contact desk for the client. As for the NorNed cable installation, Tideway successfully carried out the cable laying, landfalls, sea bottom clearing and the rock placement near subsea crossings amongst other activities.