Taihan Electric Wire Co., South Korea’s leading provider of industrial cables, has won an order to build an underground 500-kilovolt (KV) ultra-high-voltage (UHV) power cable in the southwest of the United States.

Taihan Electric Wire said on Wednesday that it will install a 53-km-long underground UHV cable that is a part of the so-called Sunzia project constructing an 830-km-long 500kV UHV power network linking Arizona and New Mexico in the U.S. It did not disclose the value of the deal, but industry sources estimated it would be worth of tens of millions of dollars.

Shares of Taihan Electric Wire Wednesday ended 11.76 percent up at 1,330 won from the previous session.

The Korean company said it has obtained the deal on a turnkey basis from a local joint venture called Sunzia Transmission set up for the project. Under the agreement, it will supply 500-kV ultra-high voltage underground cables and related connectors to Sunzia Transmission, as well as will provide electric grid planning along with routing, connecting, and test-running services. It aims to complete the installation by 2020.

The 500-kV UHV cable, an upgraded version of an extra-high voltage cable, supplies the highest voltage power among existing underground cables. Taihan Electric Wire succeeded in developing and supplying it for the first time in Korea and has been acknowledged for its technology and competitiveness by winning many contracts in Russia, the U.S. and Indonesia.

The latest deal has once again proved the company’s world-class technologies for ultra-high voltage cables, said an official at the company.

Before the Sunzia deal, Taihan Electric Wire successfully completed the construction of North America’s first 500-kV power network in California in December 2016 for the local power supplier Southern California Edison Corp.

By Kang Doo-soon and Lee Ha-yeon

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]