At the end of August, 2006, the loading of the Estlink submarine cable onto a special ship began in Sweden, via which the electric cable will be transported to the Gulf of Finland by the middle of September, and laid on the seabed there.
The diameter of the Estonian-Finnish submarine cable, manufactured in the ABB Karlskrona cable factory over the course of nearly a year, is approximately 10 centimeters, and one meter of the cable weighs approximately 30 kg. In total, 150 km of cable was manufactured, and will be placed on the ship as two big rolls, to be subsequently laid onto the seabed in parallel. The total freight of the submarine cable weighs more than 4000 tons.
"The loading of the cable onto the ship in Sweden will last for about another week, and the laying of the cable near the coast of Estonia will presumably begin in the second full week of September," said manager of Nordic Energy Link Indrek Aarna, about the project’s further development. He added that, depending on the weather, the installation work of the cable in the Gulf of Finland will last for about 10 days. Both the transport and the laying of the cable are performed by the English company Global Marine Systems.
The construction of the substations, in connection with the Estlink submarine cable project, is currently underway in Estonia as well as Finland, and the installation of the underground cable is about to be finished.
The Estlink cable, which for the first time will connect the power systems of the Baltic States and Finland, consists of both a submarine and an underground cable. In total, 210 km of cable was manufactured for the construction of the power connection between Estonia and Finland, of which the submarine cable constitutes 148 km and the underground cable 62 km, respectively. The primary purpose of the Estlink submarine cable is to supply the Nordic electricity market with electricity produced in the Baltic States. Partners in the Estlink project are Eesti Energia, Latvenergo and Lietuvos Energija in the Baltic States and Pohjolan Voima and Helsingin Energia in Finland.
