Authorities in Finland have initiated an investigation into an unexpected outage on the Estlink 2 undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia. The incident, which occurred at 1026 GMT, resulted in a reduction of available capacity on the interconnector to 358 megawatts from its installed capacity of 1,016 MW, as reported by operator Fingrid on the Nordpool regulatory web site.
Prime Minister Petteri Orpo assured the public that despite the disruption, Finland's electricity supply remained unaffected. In a statement, Orpo emphasized the importance of maintaining operational integrity, especially during the holiday season, highlighting the readiness of authorities to swiftly address such issues.
The outage has raised concerns about potential sabotage, considering previous disruptions to power cables, gas pipelines, and telecom links in the Baltic Sea region. However, Fingrid's control room manager, Arto Pahki, indicated that investigations would focus on technical malfunctions and accidents as possible causes.
Prior to the outage, the Estlink 2 interconnector was transferring electricity from Finland to Estonia at a rate of 658 MW. Fingrid is working to restore full functionality to the cable while ensuring that the incident is thoroughly examined to prevent similar disruptions in the future.