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Any system is only as strong as it’s weakest link. Offshore wind turbines are very visible upon the horizon, but many people forget the critical link between the generated power and the national grid, the sub-sea cable network.

Despite being designed to be as strong as possible, sub-sea cables can and do fail, and the repercussions for the wind farm owners can be huge, and extremely costly. Some cables fail internally however the majority of failures are as a result of an outside force, be it sharks or ships anchors. When a failure occurs, time is of the essence as every day of lost power generation represents a significant cost. In the past, sub-sea cable repairs have been known to take as long as six months.

With these challenges in mind, Lancashire based high voltage engineering company EDS, designed their Subsea Universal Joint (SUJ). The SUJ can repair a wide range of sub-sea cable sizes from all manufacturers in double quick time. It takes just 48 hours to repair a joint enabling the repair teams to take advantage of narrow weather windows even in the winter time.

With their design concept in hand, EDS approached Subsea Energy Solutions to collaborate with them and bring the idea to life. Using their expertise in designing and manufacturing products for protecting sub-sea cables, Subsea Energy Solutions created the complete SUJ ready for market. 

This now means that, for the first time, wind farm operators can invest in a permanent universal repair component as part of their contingency planning; ensuring that a versatile and robust engineered solution is available quickly in the event of cable failure. The versatile unit also dramatically reduces the number of components that wind farm operators will need to store for emergency repairs, while facilitating much faster remediation works.

Another great example of a collaboration with Subsea Energy Solutions, saving clients considerable amounts of time and money.