On 31 May Prysmian Group announced that the EHV power cable link between Sicily and Calabria across the Messina straits had been successfully handed over to its customer Terna Spa Rete Elettrica Nazionale. Prysmian was awarded the €300 m contract for what it terms its "cable of records", a milestone in terms of technological features and installation complexity, in December 2009.
The company developed and produced the double-circuit 380 kV HVAC land and submarine cable system installed along a total route of approximately 44 km – of which 38 km is under water – between the power stations of Villafranca Tirrena in Sicily and Scilla in Calabria. The project includes the installation of the first permanent monitoring system, a technology exclusive to Prysmian, carried out via18 Pry-Cam Grids devices installed along the entire length of the land route.
Prysmian installed the submarine cable with their own cableship Giulio Verne, the vessel with the largest operation capacity in the world in this sector. The land cables installation proved to be among the most technically complex ever, with operations carried out in a vertical shaft of 300 m and a tunnel 12% inclined and 2.8 km long.
The Group is currently involved in important investment programmes both in terms of technology innovation (for example that related to achieving the first 700 kV HVDC cable system in recent weeks) and of project execution, with the launch of a new cable laying barge.
