Finnish authorities are investigating the disruption of the Estlink 2 submarine power cable connecting Finland and Estonia. Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo announced this on the X network, saying that the event did not affect electricity supplies in Finland. Reuters reported about it.
The unplanned interruption of the operation of the Estlink 2 cable occurred on Wednesday at 11:26 CET, the operator of the Finnish electricity transmission system Fingrid said in a statement published on the website of the pan-European electricity exchange Nord Pool. This reduced its available capacity to 358 megawatts.
“An investigation has been launched into the incident,” Fingrid’s Arto Pahki said in a statement.
Fingrid is cooperating with the Estonian operator Elering to identify the cause. He stated that electricity supplies to Estonia are secured and Elering will use reserve capacities until Thursday. If the outage is prolonged, the capacity of the Estlink 2 cable will be replaced by other resources.
Estlink 2 is one of two electricity cables between Estonia and Finland that was put into operation in 2014. It is 171 kilometers long, of which 145 kilometers are laid on the seabed. As early as January 2007, the Estlink 1 cable began to operate, and the laying of the Estlink 3 cable is also planned.
The main purpose of the project is to ensure electricity supplies in both regions and integrate the local energy markets.
The Estlink 2 cable was also out of service from 26 January to 4 September 2024 due to a fault.
Submarine cables often have technical failures and outages caused by accidents. However, in the Baltic Sea in recent years there have been several suspected failures of electrical and telecommunication cables and gas pipelines, which have been investigated as sabotage.
On November 17 and 18, two telecommunication cables were damaged in the Swedish territorial waters of the Baltic Sea. One provides an internet connection between Lithuania and the Swedish island of Gotland, the other connects the Finnish metropolis of Helsinki with the German port city of Rostock. Authorities in Sweden, Finland, Germany and Denmark began investigating the case.
Source: spravy.pravda.sk
