SOO Green underground HVDC project prioritizes cable provider with domestic production facilities

The development of a long-distance transmission line project buried along railroad corridors, called SOO Green HVDC Link, has already begun to produce trickle-down benefits to other energy sectors.

Italian cable manufacturer Prysmian Group, which bought its U.S. rival General Cable in 2017, said it will produce the cables for the project at its South Carolina factory.

Now the company is expanding that facility to fulfill the USD 900m contract, Steve Frenkel, Vice President at Direct Connect, which is developing SOO Green, said in an interview with NPM.

The expansion will begin this fall, Frenkel said, and will see the company increase employment there from 33 workers to approximately 150.

There are seven manufacturers globally that can manufacture the class of cable needed, described as state-of-the-art ±525 kV class HVDC cable and ±525 kV cross-linked polyethylene class cables. But Prysmian Group’s ability to produce the amount of cable needed — 700 miles for the 350 mile stretch along existing railroad corridor between Mason City, Iowa and Plano, Illinois — made the company stick out in the procurement process, Frenkel said.

“The key was Prysmian’s quality and ability to offer US domestic manufacturing capacity due to its recent integration with General Cable,” Frenkel said. “Prysmian stood out globally as a manufacturer capable of supplying the entire project and ensure that we are bringing clean energy manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. Investing in US manufacturing is a critical consideration and it is important to the project, as we look towards building a clean power grid.”

Developers are currently aiming to start construction on the USD 2.5bn, 2.1 GW project in 2023 and begin operations in 2026. Dealing with a few railroad operators instead of thousands of landowners (and the legal challenges that can follow) has sped up and simplified the process, according to Frenkel.

Because of that, SOO Green could ultimately serve as a proof of concept.

“Cable manufacturers globally see SOO Green as the pace setter (in terms of) showing how these major transmission infrastructure projects can be built more quickly and without the barriers that have blocked other projects,” Frenkel said. “And so, SOO Green is unique, globally, but certainly in the U.S., with our underground installation along existing rail that solves the permitting and siting issues virtually from day one. I think it is well understood (to) cable factories around the world that if we can prove that the SOO Green model is a replicable model, (it can be) a template for building a national clean energy grid.”

It may also contribute to the growing calls for a national grid as the final project will cross the seam between MISO and PJM, relieving interconnection logjams and allowing for more clean energy development in the Midwest as options for off takers start to extend into the Mid-Atlantic states. The developers announced the start of their open solicitation process last August and are already in “robust conversations” with suppliers on the MISO side and off takers on the PJM side.

Siemens Energy is SOO Green’s strategic partner for providing converter stations, and Jingoli Power will handle construction.

By offering a solution to siting and permitting headaches, as well as to the cost allocation problem as a privately financed project, co-locating cables underground parallel to railroads can cut development time for transmission projects in half, Frenkel said.

“The Biden infrastructure plan calls for significant investment, clean energy investment from new renewables of solar and wind. And as we like to say, if you want more renewables, you need more transmission. SOO Green will unlock otherwise untapped renewable energy resources, and allow those resources to be delivered to market,” Frenkel said. “And so that model can be replicated nationally, leveraging the existing railroad infrastructure, and highways, as well, to connect real energy resources to load centers or to population centers that have an increase in demand for renewable energy.”