NeuConnect

Grain Coastal Park in Kent and Hooksiel, near Wilhelmshaven, are the two landfalls of NeuConnect, the first direct electricity link between Britain and Germany. The converter stations sit inland, on the Isle of Grain and at the Fedderwarden substation in Wilhelmshaven, and the route between them is about 725 km of land and subsea cable.

Both countries are building out wind power. The purpose, as the NeuConnect article puts it, is to move power on days when one side has excess production and the other a deficit. The link can carry up to 1.4 GW in either direction, which the developer says is enough for up to 1.5 million homes, and it expects a net cut of 13 million tonnes of CO2 over 25 years.

No public money built it. The £2.4 billion (€2.8 billion) cost is private investment from Meridiam, Allianz Capital Partners, Kansai Electric Power and Tokyo Electric Power, and financial close came in July 2022. Prysmian began making the cable in October 2022, early works started that December, and the main construction phase began in 2023. Subsea laying in UK waters started in November 2024, and all of the UK-sector cable was in the seabed by May 2026. Work in the Dutch and German sectors continues.

The cable system is two main cables of about 720 km each, operating at 525 kV DC, with a fibre-optic sensing cable extending about 150 km from each landfall. Siemens Energy builds the converters. The developer reports the 700 km cabling programme past its halfway point and all 14 transformers delivered to the UK and German sites.

Operation is due in 2028. NeuConnect’s Kent end sits beside BritNed, which has run from the Isle of Grain to Rotterdam since 2011; a second Britain to Germany project, Tarchon, is at the consultation stage. The length of the subsea section alone has not been published.