News & events

2020-10-27

Experts from the Canadian company Teshmont Consultants LP will help develop the Litgrid offshore electricity connection with Poland

Lithuanian electricity transmission system operator Litgrid has signed an agreement with an independent engineering consulting company Teshmont Consultants LP. The Canadian company's experts will advise on the implementation of the construction of the Lithuanian-Polish submarine high-voltage direct current (HVDC) cable Harmony Link, by far the largest investment in the project for synchronization of the Baltic States with the Continental Europe Synchronous Area.
 
Approximately 330 km long 700 MW submarine high-voltage direct current connection Harmony Link will connect the Klaipėda (Lithuania) and Puck (Poland) regions in 2025. The total investment for this project is around € 680 million, of which € 493 million was agreed upon to come from the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF).
 
“The complex and extremely important maritime connection project with Poland requires specific engineering knowledge and extremely high competencies. Therefore, when choosing a service provider, a lot of attention was paid to the experience and implemented projects of potential partners. The chosen company has been operating for more than half a century and working on large-scale projects in various countries around the world. Teshmont Consultants LP specialists will be entrusted with the installation of high-voltage DC submarine cable and converter stations, which require very specific competencies. Consultants will evaluate the prepared documents, such as technical specifications and requirements, provide targeted advice in case of technical, commercial, regulatory issues during the project implementation. This will help to manage processes better and avoid various obstacles,” says Gerda Krasauskė, Director of Strategic Infrastructure Department at Litgrid.
 
The services will be procured from the Canadian company in accordance with the terms of the procurement of consulting services announced by Litgrid in the summer, which stipulates that the contract price may reach up to 0.45 million EUR excluding VAT.
 
The Canadian company Teshmont Consultants LP, founded in 1966, is a world leader in high voltage transmission engineering services. The company's specialists advise more than 300 clients in 50 countries on engineering solutions related to ultra-high voltage alternating current (EHVAC) and high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission systems. Teshmont engineers and technologists are currently working on one of the largest HVDC transmission system projects in the world.
Harmony Link will be the second electrical connection connecting the Lithuanian and Polish power systems. Together with the land connection LitPol Link installed in 2016, it will allow synchronizing the electricity systems of the Baltic States with the synchronous area of Continental Europe. Until now, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, together with Russia and Belarus, have been operating in the so-called BRELL ring, where the electricity frequency is centrally regulated in Russia. It is planned to prepare the Lithuanian electricity system for disconnection from the Russian and Belarusian grid and to operate in synchronous mode with Poland, Germany and other continental European countries by 2025.
 
Preparatory work for Harmony Link has been underway since the beginning of 2019. A route survey in the Baltic Sea was completed by January 2020, and in December 2019, territorial planning works were started and are being carried out intensively. In March 2020, PSE and Litgrid launched a tender for the seabed survey and in June of this year a contract was signed for the development of technical specifications for the connection.