LionLink

Walberswick, a village on the Suffolk coast, was named in February 2025 as the British landfall for LionLink. The other end will not be on land at all. It will be an AC/DC converter station on a platform in Dutch waters, linked to the planned Nederwiek 3 offshore wind farm, so that the farm’s output can flow to the Netherlands, to Great Britain, or between the two grids when the wind is low.

That design is what sets it apart from BritNed, the existing link between the two countries. A conventional interconnector only trades; a multi-purpose, or hybrid, link also carries wind power ashore, and it can use one set of cables for both jobs. The idea is explored further in the guide to energy islands, and the Baltic has an early working example in Kriegers Flak.

National Grid Ventures and TenneT announced the project in April 2023, when it was first known as Eurolink. On 2 April 2026 they signed a joint development agreement, and offshorewind.biz reported the plan to apply for a Development Consent Order in 2026, with a decision expected in 2027 and commissioning in the early 2030s. This page gives 2032.

Getting to Walberswick took three years of consultation. National Grid’s Statement of Community Consultation of December 2025 sets out the sequence. A first round, from 24 October to 18 December 2022, offered four landfall options at Aldeburgh, Dunwich, Southwold and Walberswick and drew 234 responses. A second, from 8 September to 3 November 2023, tested a revised Walberswick site and a new cable corridor north of Southwold, and drew 1,318. Southwold was dropped when the landfall decision was announced in February 2025.

In Britain the scheme runs from that landfall by underground HVDC cable to a converter station near Saxmundham, then by underground AC cable to Kiln Lane, a substation that forms part of the same application. A Section 35 direction of 23 August 2022 puts it through the national consenting route. The statutory consultation ran from 13 January to 10 March 2026, the last step before the application goes to the Planning Inspectorate.

The figures are not yet settled. The LionLink article gives 1.8 GW at 525 kV; the April 2026 announcement said up to 2 GW, enough for up to 2.5 million households. The route length, the subsea length and the converter technology have not been published, and a final investment decision has not been taken. For now LionLink is a landfall, a wind zone and a signed agreement between two grid companies.