Viking Link

Eighty per cent of the time, Viking Link carries power from Denmark to Britain. That is the headline from the operating data summarised in the Viking Link article: in the first quarter of 2024 the cable moved 1,733 GWh at a 55% capacity factor, and the two owners had earned about €20 million between them.

The route is long even by North Sea standards. From the converter station at Bicker Fen in Lincolnshire, the link runs 765 km to Revsing in southern Jutland, 650 km of it under the sea. When it opened it was the longest land and subsea HVDC interconnector in the world. The cable itself, made of copper, steel, paper and plastic, weighs about 40 kg per metre.

Construction started in 2019. Land and submarine cables went in between 2020 and 2023, and the undersea section was completed in July 2023. National Grid and Energinet began commercial operation on 29 December 2023, but at 800 MW only, because the Danish grid behind Revsing was not yet ready to carry the full rating. From January 2024 the link could reach its 1,400 MW design capacity under certain conditions. Siemens Energy supplied the 525 kV voltage-source converters, and Prysmian and NKT supplied the cable.

The first fault came quickly. In February 2024 a minor fire in a switching station at Revsing took the link out of service. After four years of work at sea, the first outage started in a building on land.

Viking Link was built as a PCI, a Project of Common Interest in EU terms, to give the two markets a direct route to each other for the first time. The early flows show which side needed it more in 2024: Denmark exported most of the time.

The published lengths differ by two kilometres: 765 km in National Grid’s announcement and 767 km in Siemens’ order announcement. This page gives 765 km. For the other long North Sea links, see North Sea Link and the guide to subsea power cables.