Nessie Connects Hiddensee

By UDO BURWITZ, Ostsee Zeitung (Baltic Sea Newspaper)

Tuesday, 2 July 2009

Electricity experts are in a hurry to secure a continuous supply of electricity to the island of Hiddensee. The matter creates tension even for the campers on holiday. Attention Seehof, everyone should come quickly! Nessie is starting to work again! Campers from the caravan park in Seehof near Shaprode, which is located between the island of Rüggen and Hiddensee, are lucky to be in the front row to witness "Nessie's" debut in the Baltic sea.

"The matter isn't that monstrous", said Hans-Gerd Christoffers, playing with words. The matter at hand is, however, so important that the Managing Director of Christoffers Kulturbau GmbH from Conneforde, Lower Saxony, arrived personally to direct the deployment of this "monster" named Nessie, which is, of course, not in Loch Ness but in the Shaproder Bodden where two new 20,000 volt electrical cables will be installed between Rüggen and Hiddensee.
 
"Boy are they are fast!", Friedhelm Wolff said admiringly. The regional manager of E.ON edis and the customer are happy. "We planned this for two years and in just one week the whole job will be done". Thanks to "Nessie", the so-called special machine that has carried out the work. "The old cable is worn out – it's been there for half a century", said Wolff.

"We have looked at 20 options in order to find the most suitable route" says Norbert Landesberger, "and minimising the impact on the National Park has top priority". Together with experts from the network operator, Landesberger, who works as a geologist for a Berlin-based engineering company, they found a solution: the route runs dead straight from the transformer station at Seehof through the Bodden, over the ferry island of Hiddensee and lands in front of hotel "Heiderose" between Vitte and  Neuendorf. The length of the route is around 2100 metres.

"We trenched 1200 metres in one hour", shouts the Nessie driver from the cockpit. Hans-Gerd Christoffers is in his element. '"Nessie" was built specifically for subsea cable works. The lower part resembles caterpillar tracks which run on the ground. Depending on the water depth, the working platform can be hydraulically elevated up to 8 metres so that it remains above water,' he explained. "Nessie" is equipped just like an excavator in an opencast mine. But it doesn't use a shovel to dig the trench; instead, a tungsten-hardened, toothed digging chain eats its way through the ground. The machine digs a 1.3 metre deep trench in shallow water up to the waterway in Hiddensee and a three metre deep trench through the waterway itself.  The cable is laid in the trench over the spinning wheel and the trench then refilled, all in a single operation. "Very environment-friendly", praised Wolff. Although the machine weighs over 90 tonnes, the pressure from the  large caterpillar chains is relatively light since the weight is distributed across 16 square metres of the chains' surface. "Bare feet leave deeper tracks", assured Christoffers. In the past year, the company buried cable over a 7.5 kilometre length through mudflats to Germany's only offshore oil rig "Mittelplate".

The first cable of this project, which will cost more than 100,000 Euros, is now in place. "We were no more than two centimetres off the planned route", Christoffers said after checking the satellite navigation system. "The lights won't go out in the houses of the more than 1000 inhabitants of the island and their guests while the cable is being laid", assured Friedhelm Wolff. "The old cable will be disconnected at the transformer station and the new one attached. That should go smoothly". As smoothly as laying the cable. Yesterday, the campers again poured to Seehof from their mobile homes, informing everyone "Nessie is back at work again!" The second act for Nessie has begun.