On 2 February, TenneT officially opened its special cable storage facility in Eemshaven, the Netherlands, which is able to store up to 4,600 tonnes of high-voltage electricity cables.
TenneT will use the facility as a storage for massive subsea cables used for connecting offshore wind farms to the onshore grid and for offshore direct-current interconnectors (DCI), like the NorNed cable between the Netherlands and Norway and the planned COBRAcable between the Netherlands and Denmark.
The company explained that the facility’s location in Eemshaven is ideal since vessels can moor in front of it, facilitating quick and efficient loading and unloading of cables, and it is also located near the converter station for the NorNed cable and the planned landing point of the COBRAcable.
The storage facility includes two huge ‘turntables’ that are used to roll up the cables. Each turntable is divided into six sections, allowing storage of twelve different cable systems at any given time to a total of 2,300 tonnes.