The Port of Barcelona’s Board of Directors has approved the start of the procedure for building a battery of seven underground conduits that will connect the Energy and Adossat wharves.
The project, approved on 5 June, has a basic tender budget of €15 million ($16 million) and an execution period of 28 months.
According to the port, these works are complex since the conduits will cross the 700-metre-long navigation channel, passing at a depth of 32 metres below sea level.
The work is necessary to carry basic services to the Adossat wharf, which is currently being enlarged, the port reported.
The port followed that the work is also necessary to install the medium-voltage network that will transport the electric current to the ships, as specified by the Nexigen dock electrification project.
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When the north entrance mouth was opened in 2003, the Adossat wharf effectively became an island, accessible by land from the Porta d’Europa bridge.
At that time, a service gallery was built under the channel of the north entrance mouth to guarantee the supply of water, electricity, and communication services to the wharf.
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The enlargement of the Adossat wharf that is currently underway will also make it necessary to enlarge the service networks, in particular the electricity supply, to provide sufficient power to the ships connected while at berth, as envisaged in the Nexigen wharf electrification plan.
This is why it was considered necessary to build seven new underground conduits that will pass under the southern access channel of the port to connect the Energy and Adossat wharves, the port reported.
The Port of Barcelona passed the 70.9 million-tonne mark in total traffic during 2022, representing growth of 6.9 per cent from 2021. This figure represented a new record, beating the previous record of 67.8 million-tonnes set in 2018 by 4.6 per cent.
