Prysmian Group has steadily
broadened its range of products
and services offered in the
fields of renewable energy and
power interconnectors. It now
produces well-proven in-house
cable protection equipment, as
well as owning and operating
two installation vessels –
the Giulio Verne and Cable
Enterprise.
A cable-laying vessel with the largest laying capacity in the world, the Giulio Verne has belonged to the Group since 1986. Since then she has been installing milestone cable interconnections worldwide, including the Basslink in Australia, the SAPEI (from Sardinia to mainland Italy) in the Mediterranean, the Trans Bay Cable project in California, and the Hudson River Transmission project in Manhattan. In May 2015 the Group announced the official sail out of the ‘Cable Enterprise’ vessel, upgraded from a moored cable-laying barge into a DP2 cable-laying barge, and able to operate around sites autonomously without the need for tugs or ploughs, by using her own powerful propulsion system. Very importantly, the vessel maintains her ability to ground out and operate in very shallow waters. She is now amongst the most powerful submarine cable-laying barges in the market, and is the most environmentally-friendly vessel of its type worldwide, achieving an almost 80% NOx emission reduction.
Last year saw the doubling of investments into offshore wind plants – a total of €13.3 billion that allowed the connection of some 754 new windmills in 15 different projects for a total of 3,000 MW. All these efforts were concentrated in three countries: Germany with 2,300 MW, followed by the UK with 550 MW, then the Netherlands with 180 MW. Six additional projects currently underway will add more 1,900 MW to these three countries. According to Ernst & Young, offshore wind energy could allow Europe to spare some €18 billion in oil and gas imports by 2030.
Twelve out of the 28 countries in the European Union are not complying with the minimum interconnection target between power grids of neighbouring countries, which amounts to at least 10% of the domestic power generation capacity set for year 2020. Those countries are still below the 8% threshold, with seven bottlenecks still existing, even along the Alps chain, and Spain and Portugal almost entirely cut off from the European power market. Brussels nevertheless is pushing hard to overcome this situation with its new target of interconnection set at 15% for year 2030, which should Germany, UK and the Netherlands lead the way with wind speed up the process.
The submarine cable and systems segment is a stronghold of Prysmian Group that boasts a share of some 50% percent of this market. It’s a market extremely concentrated in Europe, (amounting to more than 90% of the worldwide total), but can this extremely competitive advantage be leveraged in other parts of the world? Fabio Romeo, Head of Corporate Strategy and Development of Prysmian Group, cautions that Europe is a very special case, both because of the political will to push for the kinds of projects such as offshore wind plants, and because its geographical shape favours the building of long submarine connections to carry energy from generation plants to consumption sites. But, Romeo notes, other regions of the world could also be suitable for similar developments that require cross-sea connection between power generation and power transmission sites, such as the Pacific coast of China.
