MANILA, Philippines — The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) has awarded a contract to Japanese firm Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. and local contractor S.L. Development Construction Corp. for a submarine power transmission project.
The project, which will connect the Cebu substation and Lapu-Lapu substation in Visayas, costs around 4.3 billion yen (roughly P1.9 billion). It is scheduled for delivery and completion in 2023.
Under the contract, Furukawa Electric will supply 230-kilovolt (kV) AC XLPE-insulated 1600 mm2 triple-core submarine cable, which the Japanese firm said is regarded as the world-largest conductor size class submarine cable, and cable temperature and load monitoring system.
“We continue to contribute to development of energy infrastructure in Asia with high-quality cable products and engineering services,” it said.
Meanwhile, SLDCC — which is one of the leading contractors of NGCP for transmission line and substation projects — will build the project.
Furukawa Electric said the new submarine power transmission would reinforce power transmission capacity and maintain the continuous transmission of power towards the major loads centers in Mandaue and Mactan even during N-1 contingency condition.
N-1 refers to the ability of the transmission grid to withstand a major power disturbance through redundancies in the grid system.
Currently, the existing transmission corridors serving the major load centers in Mandaue and Mactan in Cebu do not have N-1 contingency provision, the NGCP said in its transmission development plan.
If an outage occurs in one of the two 138-kV circuits of the Cebu-Mandaue- Lapu-Lapu Transmission Corridor, “the remaining circuit will be overloaded, therefore, in order to prevent damage to the equipment, power will be curtailed,” it said.
Because of this, the NGCP proposed a new transmission corridor between the Cebu and Lapu-Lapu substations, composed of overhead transmission line and submarine/underground cable system.
“The project will be designed consistent with the long-term transmission master plan of developing a 230 kV transmission backbone in the Visayas, therefore, portion of transmission corridor will be designed at 230 kV voltage level but will be initially energized at 138 kV,” it said.