The Blog

The Sylmar Ground Return Project was a large collaboration between many entities to replace an offshore DC ground return system that ran from the Sylmar Power Plant to the Santa Monica Bay. The offshore efforts involved work from LADWP, Curtin Maritime, L3 Maripro, Woolpert, Global Diving, and others. The goal of the project was to place and install a new set of “vaults” that would ground and disperse excess or disrupted DC power to a safe location offshore. After the vaults were set in place several miles offshore, two new subsea cables needed be laid from the vaults to the shore so they could connect to the Sylmar Power Plant. Woolpert collected the bathymetric data to ensure the vaults were placed the correct array and provided navigation and positioning data for the cable lay placement, ROV, and diver operations.