Prysmian reserves capacity to deliver Australian interconnector

Prysmian Group has signed a capacity reservation agreement with Marinus Link, a subsidiary of the Australian transmission system operator (TSO) TasNetworks, to reserve the capability to deliver a power interconnector project in Australia.

The agreement includes the Commonwealth Government underwriting a capacity reservation fee of up to €90 million and Prysmian’s continued capacity availability until the execution of the final contract within July 2024 for the new power interconnector between Tasmania and Victoria.

Prysmian has reserved the capacity to design, test, supply and install an HVDC cable system, consisting of 320 kV single-core cables with XLPE insulation and single-wire armoring, covering both submarine and land sections.

The submarine connection will be approximately 255 kilometers long, from Northwest Tasmania to Waratah Bay, Victoria, while the underground cable will run for approximately 90 kilometers reaching the Latrobe Valley, Victoria. The link will include a stand-alone submarine 255-kilometer fiber optic cable.

The capacity to manufacture the submarine cable has been reserved at the company’s center of excellence in Arco Felice, Italy, and for the land cables in Delft, the Netherlands, or Gron, France. The capacity for the installation operations has been reserved with the cable-laying vessel (CLV) Leonardo da Vinci.

Under the project, Prysmian is expected to also provide a fully integrated PRY-CAM permanent monitoring system which will constantly monitor all key operating parameters of the whole cable system.

“This capacity reservation agreement has a strategic importance for Prysmian as it underlines our global leadership and strengthens our regional presence in Oceania as a major supplier of an extensive range of high-tech products to power utilities. Australia represents a major market for the Group, with a number of projects under development,” said Detlev Waimann, Chief Commercial Officer of Projects BU at Prysmian Group.

With an overall capacity of 750 MW, Marinus Link will enable the transfer of power from the areas where renewable energy is generated to those where it is needed and is expected to save up to 70 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2050.

The Australian, Tasmanian and Victorian governments reached a funding agreement in October 2022 to build the bi-directional interconnector.