Aurora Energy, Australia, has completed work on Tasmania’s longest deep water high-voltage sub-marine cable project to improve power supplies to customers in the upper West Tamar region.

The $3 million investment connects Bell Bay to Beauty Point, and features more than 1.7 km of sub-marine cable with 780 m lying in water depths of 40 m.

Aurora Project Manager, Ian Walker, said that submarine cables were uncommon, but it had proved to be the best solution to improve electricity reliability to customers in the area.

“Currently electricity in Beaconsfield and Beauty Point is fed from a 30 km predominantly overhead high-voltage line,” he said. “The new submarine cable provides the same load of electricity through a four km cable.”

Walker said Olex Australia had designed the submarine cable and that the construction and installation process had taken just over 18 months.

“We have a few submarine cables in Tasmania, but nothing which needed to be fed into such deep waters,” he said. “The cable was undergrounded from Bell Bay to the river, where it was fed from a land point across to Clarence Point. From Clarence Point it was undergrounded to the next inlet of water, where it was floated across the river by a barge.  The cable contains a lead sheath to protect it from water erosion and weighs 24 kg per meter.”

Walker said the submarine cable project was one of a number of projects Aurora was undertaking to maintain a high standard of service delivery.