Electricity | The damaged electricity transmission connection between Finland and Estonia will be out of service until the end of August

Estonian and the electric cable between Finland is out of use until the end of August.

It was reported initially Estonian public broadcasting company EER Based on information provided by the Estonian grid company Elering. For HS, the matter is confirmed by the Finnish grid company Fingrid.

Also according to the electricity exchange Nordpool, the electric cable will be out of use until August 31.

A fault was detected in a cable called Estlink 2 on January 26. At the time, it was estimated that the connection would be down for a few weeks or even a few months. In mid-February, it was said that fixing the problem would take until the end of March.

Now the estimate has changed significantly, and the repair will take about half a year.

Unit master Kimmo Nepola Fingrid says that the reason for the long repair time is due to many factors.

One reason is the inconvenient location of the fault in the cable in Aser, Eastern Estonia, in the coastal area.

“The fault location is on an extremely difficult stretch of land right next to the beach. The place is steep, the soil is challenging.”

According to Nepola, the exact location of the fault has been searched non-stop until the end of January in cooperation with various parties. Already at the beginning, the fault location was narrowed down to an area of ​​about a kilometer.

According to Nepola, special equipment is needed for repairs. The equipment is completely different compared to, for example, if the fault were in the middle of the sea.

The damaged cable itself is a special cable that cannot be repaired by anyone other than the original cable manufacturer. The manufacturer is the Norwegian company Nexans. The schedule therefore also depends on Nexans' resources and their availability.

“It requires electrical engineering, control of electric fields and insulation strengths. No one can come and fix that.”

Kimmo Nepolan according to which the root cause of the fault is not yet known for sure.

However, according to current information, the fault was not caused by an external factor, for example sabotage.

“There are already several different factors that practically limit outside influence.”

The final root cause of the fault will only be revealed when the cable has been cut and taken for inspection.

According to Nepola, the long interruption of the electricity cable connection between Finland and Estonia will not affect the functionality of Finland's electricity system, as the main export direction is to Estonia. There is enough electricity in Finland.

“In Estonia, prices can go up when they don't get, for example, cheap Nordic wind electricity.”

Estlink 2 is an electricity transmission cable jointly owned by Fingrid and Elering, which runs from Estonia's Püssi to Porvoo to Anttila. The cable was officially introduced ten years ago.

The total length of the connection is about 170 kilometers, of which about 14 kilometers are overhead cables in Finland, about 145 kilometers of submarine cable buried at the bottom of the Gulf of Finland, and about 12 kilometers of land cable in Estonia.

Estlink 2 is an important electricity transmission connection for Finland and the Baltics. Its transmission capacity is largely over 650 megawatts. For example, the third unit in Olkiluoto can produce electricity with a power of 1,600 megawatts.

At the time of interruption, the power transfer of Estlink 2 was about 130 megawatts from Estonia to Finland.

The electricity transmission cable Estlink 1 still operates between Finland and Estonia, with a transmission capacity of 350 megawatts.