Weekly Intelligence Brief

ETI rolls-out £1.1m wet-mate connector project

16 December 2009

The Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) has come up with a technology project to significantly reduce subsea cable costs for marine energy devices.

This 18-month project, costing £1.1 million, will develop an 11kV wet-mate connector, which will be tested and demonstrated under workshop and real-sea conditions. The project will be led by MacArtney.

Developing wet-mate connectors with a significantly higher kV rating are expected to considerably reduce the cost of tidal and energy arrays by cutting the cable costs to shore and simplifying device installation. Higher voltage connectors allow more power to be transmitted per cable.

The connectors enable two power cables to be linked together. Currently, marine device developers either use dry-mate connectors, which have to be lifted out of the water and connected on a barge, or they use a 6.6kV wet-mate connector which is not a high enough voltage rating for efficient transmission of maximum outputs from devices back to shore.

ETI highlighted that the use of these higher voltage wet-mate connectors in future arrays is expected to lead to considerably lower installation, operating and maintenance costs, and more rapid deployment of marine energy arrays . They will enable the use of remotely operated vehicles to perform electrical connections on the sea-bed instead of having to deploy barges to perform these connections above the surface.

Read more:

Energy Technologies Institute: http://social.tidaltoday.com/search/node/Energy+Technologies+Institute