COBRA Cable Gets Green Light

Dutch Tennet and its Danish partner Energinet.dk have received all the necessary approvals for the construction of COBRA subsea cable.

The COpenhagen-BRussels-Amsterdam (COBRA) cable, with a length of 300 km, will directly link Eemshaven in the Netherlands to Endrup in Denmark.

The approval for the construction has been received from Dutch, Danish and German authorities, since the connection part of the cable will be constructed on the German seabed.

Following the approval, Tennet informed that the companies plan to start preparatory work at the end of summer, with the construction planned to start in autumn.

The new interconnector, with the transmission capacity of approximately 700 megawatts (MW), is expected to become operational in 2019.

Tennet and Energinet.dk have already contracted Prysmian and Siemens to supply cables and converter stations for the project.

Prysmian’s scope includes the supply and installation of HVDC submarine interconnector. The company’s two cable-laying vessels, the Cable Enterprise and the Giulio Verne will carry out the installation.

For the Siemens’ part, the company will supply the two HVDC converter stations at both sides of the DC power line. Both converter stations will be using HVDC Plus voltage-sourced converters in a modular multilevel converter arrangement (VSC-MMC) that convert AC to DC and DC back to AC on the other side of the link.