Hansa PowerBridge

On 13 June 2024 the Swedish government rejected Svenska kraftnät’s concession application for Hansa PowerBridge. Three weeks later, on 3 July, the grid operator announced it was ending the project because the conditions for a concession were lacking. That closed a plan that had been in formal consultation since February 2018.

The link was to run from the Hurva station in Hörby municipality, in Skåne, to Güstrow in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, with about 700 MW of capacity over a route of roughly 307 km. It would have used voltage-source converters, one at each end, and a cable station in Germany. The German partner was the transmission operator 50Hertz, whose grid in the north-east already hosts the German ends of Kontek and Kriegers Flak.

The steps before the refusal were ordinary for a project of its size. Svenska kraftnät submitted the concession application on 8 October 2020, and the environmental court held its main hearing on 2 March 2022. The operator saw the benefits as stronger integration of the European electricity market, security of supply and “increased robustness”, according to its project page.

The government weighed those benefits against the risk of rising prices, in particular in southern Sweden. The concern is easy to follow: a new route to the German market would let prices in Sweden’s southernmost bidding zone move closer to German ones. The government chose price protection.

The door was left open. The decision, as Svenska kraftnät reported it, does not ban a new connection between Germany and Sweden if the conditions change. No revived project has been announced. The voltage and the subsea length were never confirmed, and the end points on the map are approximate. For a link that does run on this sea, see Baltic Cable.