ScottishPower Renewables Completes ‘Record-Breaking’ Cable Landfall Operation for East Anglia Two

ScottishPower Renewables has completed what the company says was a record-breaking cable landfall operation for its 960 MW East Anglia Two offshore wind farm in the UK, installing two nearly 1.8-kilometre-long ducts beneath the Suffolk coastline and seabed for the project’s export cables.

The ducts, each measuring 800 millimetres in diameter, were installed using horizontal directional drilling (HDD), a technique that creates an underground passage without excavating beaches or disturbing the coastline directly. ScottishPower Renewables says the operation involved the world’s longest continuous single sections of extruded polyethylene (PE) ducts and represents the largest electricity transmission landfall of its kind in the UK, based on the combination of duct length and diameter.

Manufactured by Pipelife in Norway, the ducts were produced as single uninterrupted lengths, eliminating the need for welded joints. They will provide a protected route for the high-voltage export cables carrying electricity from the offshore wind farm to shore.

The landfall works form part of the project’s onshore civil engineering programme, led by OCU Group with support from its subsidiary Peter McCormack & Sons. ScottishPower Renewables said the operation also marked a manufacturing record for Pipelife, whose ducts measured approximately 1,793 metres each.

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