East–West Interconnector (EWIC)

On 20 September 2012 the East-West Interconnector was inaugurated at Batterstown, County Meath, with the UK energy secretary Ed Davey, the Taoiseach Enda Kenny and the European energy commissioner Günther Oettinger in attendance. Europe paid a large part of the bill: the European Investment Bank lent €300 million, the European Commission added a €110 million grant, and commercial banks and EirGrid’s own equity covered the rest.

The link runs 261 km in total, 186 km of it under the Irish Sea and 75 km underground on land. It leaves the Irish grid at Woodland in County Meath, reaches the coast at Rush North Beach in County Dublin, and comes ashore in north Wales before running to Shotton on Deeside. EirGrid started work in 2007 and finished in 2012.

Its stated aims were to increase competition, improve security of supply and make better use of Irish wind energy. Before EWIC, the island’s only direct connection to Britain was the Moyle Interconnector from Northern Ireland.

ABB supplied both the cables and the converter stations. According to Hitachi Energy, the successor to ABB’s power business, it was the first voltage-source link at ±200 kV, a step up for the technology at the time.

The link has had one serious outage. On 8 September 2016 a fault during maintenance limited exports to about 280 MW. Full import capacity of 500 MW returned on 20 December 2016, and full capacity in both directions only by June 2017, as the East-West Interconnector article records.

Since 2025 EWIC has had company on the Irish Sea: Greenlink runs from Wexford to Pembrokeshire, further south. The cable leaves Wales at a point the article gives only as coordinates, 53°20′41″N 3°24′8″W, off the north Welsh coast.