Cable ties
Optimising the design of undersea power cables
Around the world, there are powerful connections between countries that you wouldn’t know were there. Shallowly buried under the seabed are thousands of kilometres of high voltage cables, transferring power between countries and bringing power from offshore windfarms onto land.
As the requirement for renewable energy grows, so does the role – and cost – of these copper and aluminium cables.
A multidisciplinary team of Southampton researchers is running a series of interlinked projects and consultancy activity to optimise the design of these Marine High Voltage Cables (MHVCs) to maximise power transfer and save money.
This could lead to a better understanding of how climate change may be affecting ocean bottom temperatures and, in turn, biological and geochemical processes at the seabed – which are critical to the health of the oceans.
MHVCs for a typical one-gigawatt windfarm cost about £400m to design and install, with operation and maintenance costs of several millions of pounds every year.
Justin Dix, Professor in Marine Geology and Geophysics, explained: “MHVCs primarily operate two ways. Either transferring power between one country and another, for example, hydroelectric power from Norway to Denmark or nuclear power from France to England, or used to bring power from our proliferation of windfarms to land.”
If you can better understand the environment the cables are in, and therefore effectively model how heat dissipates away from the cables, you can optimise cables and reduce costs significantly.
Read the full story in Re:action, the University’s research and enterprise magazine.
Related Staff Member
Professor Justin Dix BSc, PhD
Professor Justin Dix is Professor in Marine Geology and Geophysics within Ocean and Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre Southampton at the University of Southampton.
Read moreRelated Staff Member
Dr Thomas Gernon BSc (Hons), PhD, FGS, FHEA
Dr Thomas Gernon is Associate Professor in Earth Science within Ocean and Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre Southampton at the University of Southampton.
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Professor Tim Henstock MA, PhD
Professor Tim Henstock is Professor of Geophysics within Ocean and Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre Southampton at the University of Southampton.
Geophysics uses physics to study the Earth. While we can see what is at the surface, we often want to know what is underneath; equally we may know things about the Earth now, but we want to know how it has got this way. Geophysics is one of the main ways to address these questions. We can do this by using fundamental principles of physics to build mathematical models of processes within the Earth, or by using physical measurements (such as seismic waves, gravity, or temperature) to determine the properties and state of the Earth.
I am unusual in that I work in both of these areas, building models as well as making the observations that motivate the models and can be used to test them. I am also unusual since I have worked across a wide range of length and time scales, from a few cm and hours up to 100s of km and billions of years.
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Professor David White BA, MA, MEng, PhD (Cantab), FREng, FICE, FTSE, FRINA, FIEAust
David White is a Professor of Infrastructure Geotechnics at the University of Southampton within Engineering and Physical Sciences.
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Professor Jonathan Bull BSc, PhD
Professor Jonathan Bull is based within Ocean and Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre Southampton at the University of Southampton. His current research focusses on understanding and quantifying fluid flow within sediments and across the seabed, tectonics, and marine geophysics.
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Professor Paul Lewin
Professor Paul Lewin is head of school within ECS at the University of Southampton.
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