1 March, 2012
Nexans has been awarded a contract by Tata Power’s Strategic Electronics Division (Tata Power SED), India, amounting to approximately 5 million euro to supply specialized medium voltage (MV) primary and low voltage (LV) secondary airfield lighting cables for the Indian Air Force’s ‘Modernization of the Airfield Infrastructure (MAFI)’ project. The four-year contract covers the supply several thousands of cables to upgrade the runway and taxiway lighting power circuits for 30 Indian Air Force (IAF) bases throughout India.
The MAFI project is focused on modernising the infrastructure of IAF bases where the runways need to be upgraded and are not capable of handling the new array of military aircraft set to enter service. The project aims to upgrade all IAF bases with state of the art equipment and systems to provide the capability to handle all types of modern military aircraft.
Primary and secondary cables
Nexans is supplying both primary and secondary cables for the MAFI project. This includes 5 kV cables manufactured according to FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) standards that will be used to form the main backbone of the airfield lighting power series circuits. In addition, 600 V secondary cables that meet the H07RN-F standard will also be used to provide the short spur links that connect the main power network to the individual airfield lights.
The Nexans airfield cables are designed to withstand extreme temperatures from -25° to +70°C, so they are ideally suited for use in this application where the typical runway temperatures will range from 0°C to +40°C. A further vital technical consideration was the capability of the cables to ensure total reliability and a long service life in extremely humid conditions.
The MAFI cables will be manufactured in Nexans’ Lyon and Bohain factories in France. Since the upgrading work at many of the 30 air bases is taking place simultaneously, a high level of logistical planning is required to ensure on-time delivery to each site, and this will be coordinated by Nexans’ local facilities in Delhi, India.
‘The key factor in winning this contract was that Tata Power SED was seeking an experienced supplier with the proven capability to provide a high level of locally-based technical support to ensure the correct choice of cables for this demanding airfield lighting application’, says Olivier PINTO, in charge of business development for airfield lighting cables at Nexans. ‘Another element in our favour is that we have developed a long-standing relationship with the Tata Group on previous projects combined with an excellent recent track-record in delivering cables for civil airport projects in India at Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad.’