Nexans awarded $111m French wind farm contract

Sep 26, 2023

French cabling firm Nexans has won a contract worth around €100m ($111m) from French transmission system operator Réseau de Transport d’Électricité (RTE) to supply and install power export cables for the 496 MW Le Treport offshore wind farm in the English Channel.

Under the contract, Nexans will deliver 47 km of offshore and 18 km of onshore export cables for the wind farm, located more than 15.5 km from Le Tréport and 17 km from Dieppe. For the subsea section, Nexans will supply two 23.5 km lengths of 225 kV three-core cable. The subsea cables will be manufactured at Nexans’ Halden plant in Norway, while the land cables will come from the Nexans plant in Charleroi, Belgium. The fiber optic elements will be supplied from the Norwegian site in Rognan. The installation of the subsea cables should start in the second half of 2024.

The cables will be laid by the 1976-built cable layer Skagerrak, one of the group's two vessels, along with the newly constructed Aurora. Nexans will also be in charge of the cable burial and protection for the onshore section. The awarded contract includes inspection, maintenance, and repair services for the entire project.

With a capacity of 496 MW, the wind farm should produce an average of 2,000 GWh per year, representing the annual electricity consumption of approximately 850,000 people, or about two-thirds of the population of Seine-Maritime or more than the entire population of the Somme. Developed by the consortium Éoliennes en Mer Dieppe Le Tréport, it is one of the largest commercial offshore wind projects in France. RTE is in charge of the offshore link between the substation and the onshore power grid.