wiredinUSA September 2012

wiredInUSA - September 2012

INDEX

In mid-August a ship built to provide

subsea cable laying, the

Chamarel

caught fire off Namibia’s Atlantic coast.

The fire started as the ship was returning

from repairing a Sat3-Safe cable network

that stretches between Portugal and

Spain to West Africa, and then to India

and Malaysia.

The

Chamarel

is owned by France-

Telecom Orange and has laid over

100,000km of fiber-optic cables since

1975, including AT&T’s TAT 6 cables

between Rhode Island and France and

TAT 7 cables between New Jersey and

England. The ship has been responsible for

repairing any cable breaks in the Atlantic

and Indian oceans. Cable breakages,

often caused by ship anchors and fishing

trawlers, tend to occur in shallower waters.

Though the

Chamarel

has been damaged

by the fire, the 56 crew members were

evacuated without injury. The cause of

the fire is currently under investigation.

Cable-laying ship

damaged by fire

Isofoton SA and the government of the

Dominican Republic have signed a Power

Purchase Agreement (PPA). Isofoton will

now begin construction of one of Latin

America’s largest photovoltaic plants – the

Dominican Republic’s first such installation.

The plant will have a nominal power

output of 44MW and a peak power output

of 50.6MW.

Construction of the plant at La Victoria,

15km from Santo Domingo, is anticipated

to begin in September at a cost of $150

million. The environmental benefits are

expected to be substantial, since the plant

will generate 74,532.61MW/hours of solar

power per year, equaling the estimated

supply used by 58,411 families. CO

emissions will be reduced by 44,014.16 tons

per year.

Ángel Luis Serrano, Isofoton’s president,

commented: “This will be a model plant in

the Latin American continent, where the

potential for growth in the photovoltaic

sector is enormous. Latin America is one of

the photovoltaic markets that will drive the

use of renewable energy and Isofoton’s

plant in the Dominican Republic, together

with the one we will be starting up in

Ecuador, will be one of the leaders driving

this progress.”

Dominican Republic’s

first PV power plant

Global Marine Systems Energy Ltd (GME)

has landed the first export cable at the

Gwynt y Môr Offshore Wind Farm, situated

in Liverpool Bay, off the coast of North

Wales. The cable was landed by GME’s

recently launched vessel,

Cable Enterprise

and is the first of four export cables to be

installed at the project site. Each of the

export cables are between 18km and

22km in length.

Gwynt y Môr Offshore Wind Farm is one

of the largest currently in construction

in Europe and is being built by RWE npower

renewables. Once operational, Gwynt

y Môr will have an installed capacity

of 576MW. The wind farm is due for

completion in 2014 with 160 turbines

producing enough electricity to supply

400,000 homes.

Unlike traditional vessels, the

Enterprise

is designed to ground on the beach,

allowing operations to be carried out

to the high water mark, seamlessly

continuing the installation where shore-

based vehicles finish.

Export cable lands

at Gwynt y Môr

Zurich is using fiber-optic and copper

cabling systems from Datwyler in the

conversion and construction of its data

centers. Contractor TurnKey Commu-

nications AG is deploying the “largely

pre-assembled” cables in two data centers,

with an estimated total of links of around

10,000.

As part of a standardization and consoli-

dation initiative, the city’s Zurich Organisa-

tion and Informatics (OIZ) group has built

a second data center in the metropolitan

area, in the industrial area of Hagenholz,

to create redundant resources in parallel

with those for the existing data center in

Albisrieden. TurnKey collaborated with

Datwyler in selecting the cables.

The 10G-capable copper cabling installed

in parallel consists of category 7 type CU

7702 4P data cables and IEC standard-

compliant cat. 6a RJ-45 modules, pre-

assembled to one end. The other end was

terminated on-site. For the termination of

the copper cables Datwyler supplied 135

3U sub-racks with 1160 modular six-port

front panels and 285 1U panels with 24

ports.

Datwyler also supplied 13,300 fiber-optic

duplex and 9,100 copper patch cables for

the connection of active devices.

Zurich chooses

homegrown cabling