Not many of us think about the cables hiding underground when another multi-billion infrastructure project is announced, but Britain’s new data centres, railways, electrification and decarbonisation projects wouldn’t work without them. Jean-Sébastien Pelland does think about cabling - a lot. His Camden-based business, Eland Cables, instals 100 million metres of the stuff each year, for works ranging from Network Rail’s electrification of the Great Western Line from Paddington to Cardiff to Tesla’s battery projects and Google, Amazon and Meta’s data centres.
“I’m always thinking about cables,” French-Canadian Pelland laughs. “If you close your eyes you can visualise some medium voltage cable running through a street to a substation, and then smaller cables with armouring protection around them coming into your house. Then in the house, there’s the same cable going to charging points, and all the appliances, and - it just goes on!” When Pelland sees cabling - maybe tucked away at a Tube station or exposed in a construction site - “naturally I read the print on the cable. I love to come across our name on the printing!”
