Final tenders for €300m electricity link to be sought

STATE AGENCY Eirgrid will seek final bids this month from multinational firms competing to build an electricity interconnector between Wales and Ireland that may cost in the region of €300 million.

Last year, Eirgrid, which manages the national electricity distribution network, opened talks with five players that pre-qualified to build the proposed interconnector.

Yesterday, executives from Eirgrid told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Communications and Energy that it will be accepting final tenders from the companies involved in the process later this month.

The five are: German giant, Siemens; French groups Nexan and Areva; Swiss player ABB; and Italian operator Prysmian. Eirgrid chief executive Dermot Byrne said that the final decision will be made in the autumn.

The interconnector will allow power to flow both ways between the two countries and will have the capacity to carry 500 megawatts of electricity, equivalent to a medium-sized generating station.

The project has been costed at €250 million to €300 million and is due for completion by 2012. Mr Byrne said yesterday that the plans are running to schedule.

The Oireachtas committee recently debated legislation that would allow Eirgrid to own an asset of this scale and to increase its borrowing limits. The State agency will own the interconnector.

Mr Byrne and his colleagues - Andrew Cooke, director grid development and John Fitzgerald, who is in charge of the project - told committee members that the interconnector will link Deeside in north Wales and Woodland in Co Meath, where Eirgrid operates a substation.

The agency has decided on an undersea path for the cable, but has yet to finalise a route from the point at which it comes on shore in Co Dublin to Woodland. Deeside was chosen because it was able to get the British regulator's approval and supply the capacity more quickly than the alternative sites. Eirgrid is also applying for a foreshore licence to allow it to carry out work along the Republic's coastline.

The interconnector could take up to a year to manufacture and Mr Byrne told the committee that demand on global markets for this type of equipment is high at the moment.

After the meeting, he told The Irish Times that there was no guarantee that all five pre-qualified bidders would submit final bids, "but they are serious players and we've had talks with all of them and they are very interested", he added.

In terms of the bidders, Areva is best known for developing nuclear power technology, but its British-based transmission and distribution arm is bidding for the interconnector.

Siemens is one of the world's best-known engineering groups and has a long history of working on major projects in the Republic, while Nexan, ABB and Prymsian all specialise in large cable and network development projects.

A proposal to transfer ownership of the national grid to Eirgrid is under review.