Business | An undersea change

The booming business of knitting together the world’s electricity grids

Intermittent renewables and current mayhem in energy markets highlight the importance of firms that link up producers of power with faraway consumers

Oct 16th 2021|CLV Nexans Aurora

IMAGINE A TOY boat that might fit in the palm of your hand. At mid-ship add a squat spool of sewing thread lying on its side. Scale that up about a thousand-fold and the result is the 150-metre-long Nexans Aurora. The thread in question is kilometres of high-voltage power line ready to be deployed from the aft of the ship across the sea floor. Each cable, weighing a hefty 150kg per metre and thick as a tree trunk, is a woven mix of aluminium, steel, lead and insulating material. The single stretch loaded up in a bobbin nearly 30 metres across is as heavy as the Eiffel Tower.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “An undersea change”