Finland-Estonia interconnector down again due to damage, foreign ship’s role under investigation

The Finnish authorities are investigating the sudden power outage at the Estlink 2 interconnector between Finland and Estonia that occurred yesterday, December 25, the country’s Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said.

Finland’s transmission system operator (TSO) Fingrid reported to the authorities the possible failure of the electricity cable on Wednesday afternoon, prompting an immediate investigation into the chain of events of the incidents as well as whether a foreign cargo ship is involved in the damage.

The investigation is being carried out with the Estonian TSO Elering and the authorities.

The transmission link is out of service for the time being, with the repair set to start as soon as the fault location has been identified. Fingrid noted that the failure of the cross-border electricity transmission link did not endanger the operation of the electricity system in Finland, the electricity system is functioning normally and electricity reliability is currently good.

At the time of the failure, 650 MW of electricity was transferred from Finland to Estonia.

Estlink 2, officially launched in 2014 with a capacity of 650 MW, is 170 kilometers long, of which 145 kilometers is submarine cable, 14 kilometers overhead on the Finnish side and 12 kilometers underground in Estonia.

Fingrid is expected to provide more information on the progress of the investigation this afternoon.

This is not the first time Estlink 2 was shut down this year. Namely, the link was shut down in the first hour of January 26 due to a fault located in “a geotechnically demanding area” on the Estonian coast which kept it out of operation until August 31.

A couple of months later, Elering reported that a fault had also been detected in the first electrical connection between the two countries. Estlink 1 was out of service due to a technical fault at the converter station in Espoo. The electrical connection was switched off at 4:26 a.m. on March 9 on the Finnish side, while the power cable remained intact. Operational since 2006, the link has a capacity of 350 MW.

The two TSOs signed a memorandum in June 2022 agreeing to start work on the establishment of Estlink 3. This summer Estonia’s Consumer Protection and Technical Regulatory Authority (CPTRA) initiated the building permit procedure for what will be the third electricity connection between Estonia and Finland.

Separately, the Finnish police is still investigating damage caused last year to the Balticconnector gas pipeline linking the two countries, as well as several telecom cables, said to likely have been caused by a ship dragging its anchor.