NKT put in charge of monitoring 50Hertz’s onshore and offshore power cable systems

Denmark-headquartered power cable manufacturer and installation player NKT has been hired on a turnkey supply and service framework agreement to provide cable monitoring solutions for existing and future cable systems owned by 50Hertz, Germany’s transmission system operator (TSO).

Under this frame agreement, the Danish firm will supply distributed temperature sensing (DTS) and distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) provided by the external partner, Luna Innovations. The deal covers a significant portion of 50Hertz’s demand for monitoring onshore and offshore power cable systems manufactured by NKT and other cable suppliers.

Axel Barnekow Widmark, EVP, Head of Service at NKT, commented: “We have worked with 50Hertz on a number of large high-voltage power cable projects over the years. Now I am happy to further strengthen our relationship by supplying cable monitoring solutions to a large part of their on- and offshore cable systems. Being the only cable manufacturer selected as cable monitoring supplier proves that we are a strong partner in securing the reliability of cable assets.”

Following the commissioning of the cable monitoring systems, the contract covers an additional ten years of servicing the systems with a possible extension of two years. NKT is adamant that maximizing the utility of power cable systems is just one of the benefits of cable monitoring, which also helps prolong the lifetime of cable systems.

“Electricity is fundamental in our society and power cables play a vital role in this. Cable monitoring solutions provide information about the performance of a cable. It can support in maximizing the utility of the system and in avoiding failures as well as shortening outages,” outlined the Danish player.

The deal comes only weeks after NKT inked a four-year service agreement with Pipeline Repair and Subsea Intervention (PRSI) Pool, allowing it to perform turnkey repairs for offshore power cables owned by the member companies.

The new agreement with 50Hertz also follows the award of five projects under a larger framework agreement with the German TSO, which helped the Danish firm to secure a high-voltage order backlog of €11 billion for the third quarter of 2023.