Estlink 2

Christmas Day 2024 is the date most people now attach to Estlink 2. That day an unplanned outage cut the Estonia–Finland crossing from 1,016 MW to 358 MW. Finnish authorities escorted the tanker Eagle S into Finnish waters and linked it to Russia’s so-called shadow fleet; the damage was traced to a dragged anchor. The repair took until 18 June 2025, when the link returned to full service. It was the second long outage of 2024: from 26 January to 4 September the link had already been out with a cable fault near the Estonian coast.

The link exists because Estlink 1 was not enough. A Baltic Sea grid study finished in early 2009 concluded that the Baltic states needed stronger ties to the Nordic and continental markets. Fingrid’s project page records the rest: planning from spring 2009, main permits in November and December 2010, cable laying in autumn 2012 and testing in autumn 2013. A trial period ran from 6 December 2013 to 6 February 2014, when commercial operation began, and the link was formally opened on 6 March 2014. With it, the Finland–Estonia border reached 1,000 MW.

The route starts at the Püssi converter station in north-east Estonia, runs about 11 km underground to the coast, then crosses the Gulf of Finland to the Nikuviken cable terminal in Finland. The last stretch, about 14 km, is overhead line into the Anttila station at Porvoo. The budget was €320 million, of which the EU contributed €100 million.

Unlike its predecessor, Estlink 2 uses line-commutated converters, the older thyristor design, at a higher voltage. The figures show the difference: two links on the same border, built eight years apart, on two different converter technologies.

How seabed cables are exposed to anchors is covered in the guide to subsea power cables. The Wikipedia account of the Estlink cables keeps the dates. For Estlink 2 itself, the June 2025 restart left one open question: how the operators will guard a cable whose position is on every chart.