Wave Hub Construction

The hub and 25km subsea cable were manufactured by JDR Cable Systems . The cable was fabricated in one continuous length and is made up of six copper cores, 48 fibre optic cores, two layers of steel wire armouring and an outer polymer sheath. It is 16 centimetres in diameter and weighs 1,300 tonnes.

The hub weighs around 12 tonnes and splits the main cable into four 300m cable ‘tails’ to which groups of wave energy devices can be attached.

Offshore contractors CTC Marine Projects handled the installation of the hub and the subsea cable. This included burying the cable under the seabed for the first five kilometres offshore.

Offshore contractors Tideway handled the rock placement operation. This involved placing 80,000 tonnes of rock on the cable from around 5 kilometres offshore out to the Wave Hub site, to an average depth of around 0.5m of rock.  This armouring will hold the cable in place and minimise the risk of entanglement.

Powermann Ltd handled the onshore electrical works and the sub-station at Hayle was built by Dawnus Construction.

The onshore horizontal directional drilling to construct a duct under the coastal sand dunes was carried out by civil engineers Dean & Dyball.

Managing contractors for the Wave Hub project were JP Kenny, Staines.