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ABB CABLE FACTORY WORKING OVERTIME
The plant in Karlskrona, which has its own deep water port because the cables are too heavy to carry by road, has been working around the clock for nearly two weeks to load two ships with 11,000 tons of cables. The cables are for two projects nearing completion in northern Europe that use high-voltage direct current, a technology pioneered by ABB in the 1950s to enable low-loss, long distance transmission of electricity. "We've never had to load two ships at once so it's been quite a challenge," said Hans-Ake Jonsson, manager of the factory and head of ABB Cables. The cables were fed straight from the factory onto the ships that will also install them. The non-stop operation involved at least 30 people at any given time, including factory staff, ship workers, external contractors, harbor employees and customer representatives. Most of the cables are of a type that is the most complex ever made at Karlskrona. They will be used on a link between Norway and the Netherlands and contain two cables side by side within an oval-shaped enclosure. The cables for the NorNed link accounts for 7,000 tons of the total load and are the third of six deliveries ABB is making for the 580-kilometer connection. It will be the longest underwater high-voltage cable in the world when it is completed in 2007. The remaining 4,000 tons of cables are for a link between Estonia and Finland that is scheduled for completion in late November. The Estlink uses HVDC Light, an ABB innovation that employs very high-power semiconductors to gain complete control over the power flow. This control makes HVDC Light ideal for connecting different networks and strengthening the grids it links. The Estlink cable is the world's longest underwater HVDC Light connection.
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