This has been an historic month for the Company – and the many engineering staff who have worked on our Normandie 3 subsea cable project over the last decade – with the commissioning of the new circuit so far proving a resounding success. At 11.40am Tuesday 23 September the Normandie 3 circuit was switched on and energised at 90,000volts. The next day at 1.17pm Patrick Cooney a trainee shift operator at La Collette, under the supervision of Chief Engineer John Duquemin closed the Normandie 3 circuit breaker to bring power into Jersey from our new interconnector for the first time.
Initial results look good and power is nicely balanced between the Normandie 2 and Normandie 3 submarine cable circuits.
Energy Division Director David Padfield said: ‘It has taken some nine years to reach this point, and as Project Executive, I would like to thank everyone involved in the project for a job well done. It has been a great team effort, including the generation teams in both islands who have supported so well these last 27 months while our import capabilities have been reduced.’
Chief Executive Chris Ambler said: ‘I am immensely proud of the whole team for the fantastic progress so far. In particular the commissioning team of John Duquemin, Peter Snape, Mark Vivian, Mark Willie, Ian Crawley and Ola Gabrielsson with support from Jeremy Willis, David Padfield and Danny Maletroit – have done a stellar job on a delicate process.
‘Considerable work is still to be done over the coming weeks as we closely monitor and test cable management systems. While this work continues, we are not making external statements on the status of our commissioning work. For the moment we request that this information not be passed outside the company please.’
