EuroWire May 2015

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Farmers lobby for undersea cables

National Farmers Union of Wales (NFU Cymru) is calling for transmission cables from Wylfa to be laid under the sea bed to Deeside, rather than using overhead and underground cables across the Welsh island of Anglesey as detailed in a recent meeting with National Grid. Anglesey NFU Cymru county chairman Christine Jones said: “It was extremely disappointing to learn that even though undersea cable is technologically possible, National Grid is not going to pursue this option due to costs. “We have now asked National Grid for figures to show the difference in capital to whole life costs and subsequent cost impacts on electricity bills of the various options considered in the original consultation. “In the meantime National Grid is intent on pressing ahead and may be in contact with farmers and landowners as they carry out land referencing and baseline surveys and this is an ideal opportunity for those affected to once again question their choice. Also, with a general election looming, it is an ideal opportunity for farmers to raise any concerns with local parliamentary candidates.”

▲ ▲ The Wylfa plant in Wales

due later this year, followed by a statutory consultation in 2016.

Cable fault research Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) is a partner in a new research project to design a system to detect and prevent high voltage insulation faults in subsea power cables. Funded by the department of energy and climate change (DECC) offshore wind component technologies development and demonstration scheme, GCU lecturer and researcher Dr Alistair Reid will work on the nine-month project with High Voltage Partial Discharge Ltd (HVPD), Alstom Grid, and the University of Strathclyde. Using its high voltage laboratories, used for testing and analysis of partial discharge data, GCU is receiving £56,000 of grant funding to propose new diagnostic solutions to online HVDC cable monitoring. by Manchester-based HVPD to develop a condition monitoring system for HVDC networks. National Farmers Union of Wales (NFU Cymru) – UK Website : www.nfu-cymru.org.uk The research will be used country with high electricity demand. We will continue to lobby for this on behalf of our members,”Ms Jones concluded.

“Our policy always has been and remains that the increased capacity requirement should be via an undersea cable from Wylfa to Deeside directly to a part of the

A consultation on alignment options is

The Italian job for Interoute Interoute has added a third route to access its pan-European fibre network. The new 1,300km stretch of fibre is part of Interoute’s 7,000km Italian network, and part of its 67,000km pan-European platform. The new route will provide high-capacity connectivity from Interoute’s landing stations in Mazara del Vallo (Sicily) and Bari (Puglia), for submarine cables connecting to Europe. Cables from Greece, Malta, Tunisia and Israel have already come ashore at Interoute’s southern Italian landing stations. Interoute’s new route is designed to support 8 Terabit/s of traffic, offering wavelength service up to 100Gbit/s. By offering three completely diverse routes from both Mazara del Vallo and Bari, to the major cities connected on its pan-European network, Interoute is reducing the vulnerability and risks associated with a single point of failure. It also enables significantly shortened submarine cable routes by offering an alternative landing point in the south of Italy to those further afield, such as Marseille. Renzo Ravaglia, Interoute EVP, service provider, said: “With this further expansion of its network Interoute is making southern Italy the most attractive landing point for all the submarine cables wanting to reach Europe, that come from the Far East, Middle East and Africa. “With Cisco estimating that the Middle Eastern and African regions will continue to have the highest growth of IP traffic until 2018, predicting a fivefold growth with a compound annual growth rate of 38 per cent, the demand for broadband services looks set to keep rising.” Interoute – Italy Website : www.interoute.com

Glasgow Caledonian University – UK Website : www.gcu.ac.uk

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May 2015