RES Improves Offshore Export Cables

RES Offshore has designed a new rating method for export power cables set to vastly improve power transportation from offshore wind farms, with currents improved by up to 22%.

The new cable rating method, developed in cooperation with University of Southampton, has moved away from the traditional power transmission models, which presume that maximum power will be transmitted through the cables at all times.

RES Offshore has applied its statistical understanding of wind speed distribution and power flow variation, and incorporated this into the thermal design of the cable, allowing for peaks and troughs in current transmission. Where the traditional model is conservative, due to the expectation that enough copper is required to support constant operation at full capacity, RES’ revised method requires less copper to be used by taking advantage of the cooling down periods that come with decreased wind speed.

Simon Catmull, Project Engineer at RES Offshore, commented;

“We know that developers are looking to reduce the cost of offshore wind farm development and our new power exporting cable design can enable this. These new cables can be used for Round Three projects and offer a significant improvement in current delivery over the traditional method.”