First electrical transmission link from Orkney Islands

Paris, France – September 16, 2024 – Nexans, a global leader in the design and manufacturing of cabling systems and services, has signed the contract for the Orkney Link by SSEN Transmission following the capacity reservation agreement signed in November 2023.

The significant contract includes both the production and the installation of the cable. The 220kV high voltage alternating current (HVAC) cable will be largest capacity cable connecting the Orkney Islands to mainland Scotland and will span 53 km offshore and 16 km onshore route in total in Finstown, Orkney and Dounreay in Caithness, UK.

The Orkney Link will exchange up to 220 MW of renewable energy between the islands and the mainland and is a critical step in strengthening the UK power network, supplying demand centres in the North of Scotland and beyond with clean energy from one of the world’s greatest resources of renewable electricity. Subsea interconnectors, which connect two areas of land together with an underwater electrical cable, allow for the expansion of electrification and the growth of renewable energy. In the case of the Orkney Islands, there is an abundance of renewable resources from established and planned onshore wind farms to emergent technologies that harness electrical energy from the oceans and will all support delivery of the UK and Scotland’s Net Zero targets.

The interconnector will be manufactured at Nexans’ plants in Halden Norway for the offshore sections, Charleroi, Belgium for the onshore cable sections, and Cortaillod in Switzerland for the accessories.

Nexans will aslo install the cable using its state-of-the-art cable laying vessels. The project will be delivered in 2027 by Nexans experts at multiple locations, including in the UK and adds to Nexans' expanding portfolio of interconnectors including the Celtic Interconnector and the Crete-Attica Interconnector.