NKT has completed a turnkey repair of one of the 220 kV high-voltage AC subsea export cables connecting the Beatrice offshore wind farm in the Scottish Moray Firth to the Aberdeenshire coast.
In April 2025, an unplanned transmission outage occurred on one of two of Beatrice’s Transmission Capital Partner (TCP) -owned export cables, bringing renewable electricity to shore for around 450,000 UK households and reducing the site’s export capacity by 50 per cent.
The cable, which was not manufactured by NKT, was repaired using NKT’s adaptive rigid sea joint (ARSJ). Central to the swift turnkey repair were two of those joints, which were mobilised from NKT’s stock within days. These joints are designed to work with most high-voltage subsea AC cables from 110 kV to 300 kV, regardless of manufacturer.
“A key enabler for the rapid repair was NKT’s ability to provide the adaptive rigid sea joints directly off the shelf, allowing us to use NKT repair services on this asset expediting the repair program in advance of other options available to us,” said Bruce Turner , Asset Manager from Transmission Capital Partners, the offshore transmission owner responsible for operation and maintenance of the export cable infrastructure.
The repair was performed using NKT’s cable-handling system, which transforms standard construction vessels into fully equipped cable-repair vessels. In this case, the system was deployed aboard the North Sea Giant from Ocean Installer.
The repair was executed in 38 days, and the cable was re-energised by the end of July, fully restoring the transmission system’s export capacity.
The 588 MW Beatrice offshore wind farm features two export cables, each about 70 kilometres long, running from the offshore site to the landfall near Portgordon, Scotland.
The project, which has been fully operational since 2019, is operated by SSE Renewables on behalf of a joint venture partnership between SSE Renewables (40 per cent), Red Rock Renewables (25 per cent), The Renewables Infrastructure Group (17.5 per cent), and Equitix (17.5 per cent).