Balfour Beatty in consortium with Prysmian Group has been awarded approximately EUR 219 million contract by ElecLink to install a 65 km electricity cable between France and Great Britain.
The cable will be installed through the Channel Tunnel, an undersea tunnel linking Folkestone in Kent to Coquelles in Pas-de-Calais.
The ElecLink interconnector will have a 1GW capacity, providing enough energy to power more than 1.65 million households per year.
The installation of the HVDC interconnector will involve laying two 50 km cables through the North tunnel and connecting them to converter stations in Northern France and Kent. Prysmian Group will be responsible for the design and manufacture of the 320kV cabling and jointing services.
Balfour Beatty will deliver efficiencies in the construction programme through using offsite jointing facilities in Calais and Folkestone to assemble 2.5 km sections of cable and computer modelling to model the build in a virtual environment.
The project will provide employment for up to 300 people, Balfour Beatty noted.