MacArtney has chosen to unify a vast pool of its technical expertise, operational experience and marine renewable energy industry leading connectivity solutions under the new and dedicated ‘GreenLink’ brand.
Given the finite nature of fossil energy sources such as coal, oil and natural gas, alternative marine based energy sources have seen a surge in global interest and investment. For example, the number and scale of wave and tidal energy projects has dramatically increased over the last 10 years with industrial scale test-turbines, novel energy converter technologies and fully operational grid connected arrays already in place at various renewable energy hotspots around the globe.
Moreover, the tried and tested wind based renewable energy source is producing significant leaps in technology – with floating wind turbines placed afar from shore and out of sight – where winds are stronger, as a promising ‘next big thing’.
Within this context, MacArtney is dedicated to provide commercially viable connectivity solutions for harvesting and harnessing the power generated, hereunder making sure that each and every watt is safely and efficiently transferred to the land based electricity grid. For this purpose, the GreenLink brand brings together a range of powerful solutions based on years of research, development and field deployment.
The backbone of the GreenLink range is the GreenLink Inline Termination engineered to make offshore inline connections faster, easier and more effective while closing the gap between the power generation platform and the onshore power grid. Cables can be terminated on site or ahead of cable laying and the actual mechanical connection of the two halves takes less than two hours, making it a good solution for marine renewable applications with limited time windows, such as tidal energy units. The short connection time also means that valuable ship and downtime is reduced.
Proven and dependable, MacArtney GreenLink Inline Termination solutions are often used to connect dynamic cables from offshore renewable wind, tidal and wave energy converters to export cables. Moreover, they are widely used to interconnect subsea units. This interconnection process can be further empowered by the availability of MacArtney GreenLink Hubs which are heavy-duty, modular ‘subsea sockets’ made up of a number of modules to house multiple cables.
Each module is mechanically linked to other modules and extra sections can be added at initial launch or at a later date, making a hub a flexible option over time. The innovative GreenLink hub design is connector based and all connections are mechanical, eliminating the need for moulding and drying, hereby making on-vessel preparations much faster and more efficient.
Press release; Image: MacArtney