■ The project will replace submarine cables by 2021, and cost about KRW 66 billion
■ Due to replacement demands and expansion of offshore wind power generation, the US submarine cable market is growing


LS Cable & System (President & CEO, Roe-Hyun Myung) announced on May 6 that the company has been awarded a KRW 66 billion contract for Wisconsin-based, American Transmission Co.’s Straits Cable Replacement Project.

LS Cable & System will manufacture, transport and oversee the installation of two new cables for the project, establishing two (2) new 138,000-volt circuits in the Straits of Mackinac that are approximately four miles in length. These two (2) new 3-phase cables, using modern solid dielectric technology, will replace the existing six (6) 1-phase cables currently in place in the Straits. This submarine cable replacement project will re-establish electric reliability and operational flexibility between Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and lower Michigan. 

Development of offshore farms in the US is also driving the growth of the submarine cable market. The US is expected to increase annual wind power generation to 86GW by 2050. It is tantamount to electricity that can be used by at least 80 million households.

“As replacement demands for old cables and new demands coming from development of offshore farms are combined, the US submarine cable market is expected to grow continuously,” said President & CEO, Roe-Hyun Myung of LS C&S. “LS C&S is planning to depart from the conventional Asian centrism and concentrate its marketing efforts on development of new markets, such as the US, Europe and Africa.”

The company said that since its advance into the US extra-high-voltage cable market in 2006, it successfully carried out the first offshore wind farm link project in the US in 2017 and has since continuously built trust in the market.

LS C&S entered into a contract worth KRW 500 billion in total with Taiwan for the supply of submarine cables last year, and recently won contracts to the tune of hundreds of billions of Korean Won in Europe and the Middle East in a bid to continuously penetrate global markets.