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Iberdrola Distribución is to invest over €6 million on improving the electricity supply in the northern area of La Manga del Mar Menor, installing a new underground power line that will run for about two kilometres at a depth of 15 metres below sea level.

This important intervention will also allow to dismantle the existing overhead medium voltage power line that currently crosses the La Encañizada islet from the La Ezequiela Mill, inside the grounds of the San Pedro del Pinatar regional park with its sand dunes and salt flats.

The existing power line will be dismantled after the new underground electricity pipeline is commissioned, which will allow to improve the reliability and quality of the supply throughout La Manga.

The electricity supply to La Manga del Mar Menor currently comes almost exclusively from the power lines that leave the La Manga electrical substation, which is located at the entrance to the area. The distance covered by some of the cables to reach the points of supply located in the northern area is about 20 km.

The commissioning of the new power line from the San Pedro del Pinatar electrical substation will equip La Manga with a new electricity supply from the northern area, thus increasing the reliability of the company’s distribution network due to the availability of a double supply - from the north and from the south - with one being able to back up the other in case of any exceptions. 

Four new medium voltage power lines

This project, which is ambitious in both technical and environmental terms, will commence with the construction of four medium voltage (20 kilovolt (Kv) power lines combined in an underground pipeline that will be 12.5 km long, starting at the San Pedro del Pinatar transformer substation.

One of these lines will boost the supply to the urban area of the locality and the remaining three will continue in the underground pipeline along a further 3.5 km, running under the Quintín Mill Route.

At this point, in order to reach the north of La Manga del Mar Menor, the triple circuit will have to run through about two kilometres of sea.  The crossing will be completed using remote-controlled horizontal directional drilling (HDD). The drilling will be carried out at a depth of 15 metres under the sea bed, using the islet of La Encañizada as the base of operations.  Each of the three power lines will be laid in separate tubes, which will in turn be contained inside a common pipeline.

The HDD technique for installing the undersea cable will be completed in two separate operations starting out from the La Encañizada islet: the first pipeline will run north in the direction of the La Ezequiela Mill, always under the sea bed and covering a distance of 1.2 km; and the second will run south over a distance of 610 m, emerging in the northern area of La Manga del Mar Menor.

HDD is the most environmentally-friendly method for installing underground pipelines. As well as being efficient and clean, it avoids causing an impact on the sea bed and on the surface. 

This technique allows to direct the drilling work on a controlled basis  using geolocation positioning systems via the most suitable route for installing the pipeline at a depth of 15 metres, considering the sea bed to be level zero.

Once it reaches the north of La Manga, the pipeline will continue its route along roads, connecting with the existing networks to the transformer stations in the area, thereby helping to improve reliability and boost the electricity supply. 

The company plans to commence the work involved in the first stage of the project in the month of March and the time frame for completing the entire project is two years. 

The transmission capacity of the new underground pipeline will be enough to supply electricity to some 23,000 households. 

The project involves over 150 km of electricity cables, 12,500 m of underground pipelines, 1,850 metres of HDD, the interconnection of 10 transformer stations and some 28,000 man-hours of direct employment.