News & events

2015-05-05

The last 50 kilometres of NordBalt cable will be soon laid to the seabed

During the month long work in 2015 the special vessel Topaz Installer laid more than 50 kilometers of HVDC cable NordBalt in the Baltic Sea. She is completing the laying of the second same length section at the moment. 
There’s been three incidents in March and April this year when the commands by the Russian military navy were received by the vessels involved in the NordBalt cable installation. 
 
The cable guarding vessels Alcedo and Emanuel were instructed to change their locations for a period of time up to 10 hours, and returned back afterwards. The function of the guard vessels is to guard already laid but not yet protected cable sections from possible damages by fishing vessels or ship anchors.
 
The cable laying vessel, Topaz Installer, has been working at a different site at the time. These incidents caused no disruption in the cable laying procedures. 
 
Most of the cable, almost 350 km of the 400 under-water cable, has been laid onto the seabed now. 
 
NordBalt will be the first power interconnector between Lithuanian and Swedish electricity systems. The commissioning of the Lithuanian-Swedish interconnector is scheduled in December 2015. The 453 km undersea connection will have a capacity of 700 MW. The NordBalt link will join the Baltic Sea region into one infrastructure and will increase the opportunities for the Baltic countries to import Scandinavian electricity by 70 percent.