The work, which is being carried out by Dawnus Construction and will take two weeks, will involve piling metal sheets into the sand to a depth of around five metres to create a metal ‘box’ 10m long and five metres wide, with a further five metres of sheet above beach level. The sand inside the box will then be excavated to a depth of about three metres.
When Wave Hub’s 25km, 1300-tonne subsea cable is laid later this summer, it will terminate inside the beach pit and be connected to cables threaded through two ducts that have already been drilled through the sand dunes at Hayle.
These cables will lead back to a substation currently being built on the other side of the dunes, and ultimately connect Wave Hub with the National Grid.
Wave Hub is creating the world’s largest test site for wave energy technology by building a grid-connected socket on the seabed, 16km off the coast of Cornwall, to which wave power devices can be connected and their performance evaluated.
The £42M project has been developed by the South West RDA and is a cornerstone of its strategy to develop a world-class marine energy industry in South West England.
Wave Hub’s cable, which is being manufactured by JDR Cable Systems in Hartlepool, is nearing completion and the RDA has appointed CTC Marine Projects based in Darlington, County Durham to deploy the cable and hub during the summer. The substation building is largely complete and the installation of more than £1M of electrical equipment will begin later this month.
Wave Hub is being funded with £12.5M from the South West RDA, £20M from the European Regional Development Fund Convergence Programme and £9.5M from the UK government.
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