Finland investigates outage of undersea power link to Estonia

Finland’s Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said on Wednesday authorities in his country were investigating an undersea power cable outage on a line connecting Finland and Estonia.

An unplanned break in service on the Estlink 2 interconnector occurred at 1026 GMT, operator Fingrid said in a statement on the Nordpool regulatory website, reducing its available capacity to 358 megawatts (MW) from an installed capacity of 1,016MW.

“Even at Christmas the authorities are on standby to investigate the matter,” Orpo said in a post on X.

The interruption did not affect Finland’s electricity supply, he added.

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‘Powerful explosions’ caused Nord Stream leaks, Danish authorities say

‘Powerful explosions’ caused Nord Stream leaks, Danish authorities say

Authorities in the region have been on high alert for potential acts of sabotage following a string of outages of power cables, gas pipelines and telecom links in the Baltic Sea in recent years, although subsea cables are also subject to technical malfunctions and outages caused by accidents.

“An investigation into the incident has been initiated,” Fingrid control room manager Arto Pahki said in a statement. Pahki also told public broadcaster Yle that “the possibility of sabotage cannot be ruled out”.