Polypipe, the UK’s leading manufacturer of sustainable drainage, water management and cable protection products has supplied over 10km of Ridgiduct Power HV to help connect new wind turbines to the Scottish power grid in Cour.
Wind power is generating an increasing percentage of UK electricity, and the ten new wind turbines at Cour Wind Farm on the Mull of Kintyre, Ayrshire, will provide power to 20,000 homes in Scotland.
The project involved installing a network of connected individual 2.05-MW Senvion turbines and a Grid Connection Point, positioned across former agricultural land. The Ridgiduct Power HV cable protection system containing 33kV cabling has been connected from the turbines to the wind farm control building and main power sub-station.
Ridgiduct Power HV was supplied with a black outer wall and a red inner wall for both high voltage power and communication lines. The system was installed underneath the centre of the wind farm access roads by main contractor on the site RJ McLeod, on behalf of the client Blue Energy.
Ridgiduct Power HV is a twinwall cable protection system, with a full range of fittings and accessories designed specifically for use with high voltage power communication cables, which operate at high temperatures. It meets the requirements of ENATS 12-24 class 1 specification for electrical cable ducts, and offers compliance for conduits buried underground. Similar to the existing Ridgiduct range, it is low in weight, flexible, durable, high in strength and can be easily cut to the required lengths needed on site. The system was produced with wind farm and other high voltage power applications in mind, offering a robust alternative to PVCu cable protection.
Alex Souden, Project Manager at RJ McLeod, comments: “Wind farm projects can be completed quickly thanks to the availability of high quality products such as Ridgiduct Power HV, which provided us with a robust and easy to install solution. This was a large project, and the ability to connect the power for ten wind turbines to a central system will ensure that the wind farm will come online and be operational in the early part of 2017.”
Steve Smith, Power Sector Manager at Polypipe adds: “Great Britain is now the sixth largest producer of wind energy in the world and accounts for a growing percentage of the UK power grid output. As a result, projects in remote locations such as Cour are increasingly common. With plastic cable protection, such as Ridgiduct Power HV, Polypipe can provide an easy to install, robust, high quality system that will provide energy companies with long term peace of mind.”