Bayonne, New York Harbour

• Cable system design and engineering of 41.5 km 3-core HVAC submarine XLPE cable.
• Manufacturing and qualification testing.
• Offshore cable installation, cable laying and burial.
• Cable routing and terminating on the platform.
• Site acceptance testing.

Bayonne Energy Center is a high-efficiency gasfired power plant in Bayonne, New Jersey, owned by the energy company Hess Corporation and the investment firm ArcLight Capital Partners. Built on an old industrial site on the shore of New York Harbor, it is strategically located close to Staten Island, Brooklyn and Manhattan. It generates 512 MW of electricity.

Before reaching the city’s power transmission network, the power is fed to Con Edison’s 345 kV Gowanus substation in Brooklyn via a submarine cable system which crosses New York Harbor south of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. New York is a busy sea port with freighters, cruise ships, ferries and tourist boats anchoring or operating. Due to concerns about future maintenance, dredging and the risk of anchor damage, state and federal agencies required cables to be buried at a depth of 15 feet (4.6 m) in the bottom sediments.

In addition, Bayonne Energy Center required that all submarine cables should be extruded in a single continuous length without any factory joints. Such a long extruded cable had never been attempted before at this voltage level and required an exceptional level of expertise at the factory. We were selected for our ability to meet the technical and quality requirements.

The world´s first three 345 kV AC single-core submarine XLPE cables were installed with approximately 33 ft. (10 m) separation across New York Harbor. It also includes 345 kV AC single-core underground XLPE cables installed in traditional duct-banks. They run for a distance of 2,600 ft. (792 m) on the Bayonne side and 900 ft. (274 m) on the Brooklyn side.

The complete cable system solution includes design and engineering, manufacturing and qualification testing, cable-laying and installation and commissioning. All cables were manufactured at our state-of-the-art cable factory in Sweden.

After manufacturing and the excellent completion of the factory acceptance test, the cables were shipped to New York and transferred to a cablelaying vessel. Each cable was laid and simultaneously buried at a depth of up to 15 ft. (4.6 m) below the seabed using a jet plow.

We successfully completed field testing in November 2011 and the cable system was energized in December 2011. From 2012, it offers the Big Apple a truly stable power supply.