Monday 8 June 2015

UK-Belgium power link awards €500m contract

A €500 million (£360m) contract to build a subsea power interconnector between the UK and Belgium has been awarded.

Engineering giant Siemens and Japanise company J-Power Systems have been chosen for the NEMO LINK project, which is estimated to deliver 1GW of power between the two countries.

J-Power Systems will design, manufacture and install the cables while Siemens will provide service and maintenance for the converter stations in Kent and Zeebrugge for five years.

Alan Foster, NEMO LINK board member, said: “The use of this state-of-the-art cable technology allied to the very efficient converter stations will make Nemo Link the most innovative interconnector in Europe, bringing new supplies of competitively-priced electricity to the market."

The engineering design work and site preparation is expected to begin later this year and the interconnector is scheduled to start operating in 2019.