Estlink 2

Following completion of offshore repairs to replace the damaged subsea section, Fingrid announced that EstLink 2 would return to commercial operation on 25 June 2025, restoring the full cross‑border capacity between Finland and Estonia that had been lost since the December 2024 outage. By August 2025, Nexans confirmed the repair was successfully completed and that the interconnector had been reinstated as a key electricity link in the Baltic region.

In response to the December 2024 anchor‑damage incident, Nexans and the TSOs Elering and Fingrid undertook a major subsea repair campaign on EstLink 2 in May 2025. Preparatory work from February to April involved lifting and cutting out the damaged section, after which approximately one kilometre of new spare subsea cable and repair joints were installed from the vessel Deep Cygnus to reconnect the undamaged cable ends, in a repair estimated to cost €50–60 million shared between the two TSOs.

On 25 December 2024, the 658 MW EstLink 2 subsea power interconnector between Finland and Estonia was disconnected from the grid following a sudden fault in the submarine cable section, reducing cross‑border capacity to the smaller EstLink 1 link. Authorities in Finland and Estonia launched investigations, focusing on the possible role of passing vessels, including the tanker Eagle S and a Hong Kong‑flagged cargo ship, in dragging an anchor over the cable and severing it.

After completion of repairs on the Estonian coastal section, EstLink 2 was re‑energised and resumed commercial operation on 4 September 2024. This restoration ended the extended outage that began with the January 2024 fault and returned the full 650 MW transmission capacity of the interconnector between Estonia and Finland to the market.

Following the January 2024 internal fault at the Estonian coastal section of EstLink 2, Elering and Fingrid carried out a major repair campaign that required replacing approximately 300 metres of oil‑paper insulated cable near the landfall. The work included constructing a new marine cable joint from a coastal platform and completing a transition joint between the marine and land cables, with the repair campaign lasting until early September 2024 at a reported cost of over €30 million.

EstLink 2 suffered an unplanned outage originating near the Estonian landfall in late January 2024, taking the 650 MW HVDC interconnector between Estonia and Finland offline. Transmission system operators Elering and Fingrid located the fault close to the cable landing on the Estonian coast and later attributed it to an internal short circuit in the power cable itself rather than external damage, triggering a prolonged shutdown for investigation and repair.

Estlink 2, the 171-kilometre, 650 MW HVDC interconnector between the Püssi converter station in Estonia and the Anttila converter station in Finland, was officially inaugurated on 6 March 2014, marking its formal ceremonial opening following the start of commercial operations earlier that year.

On 6 February 2014, EstLink 2 was formally handed over to its owners Elering AS and Fingrid Oyj and made available for commercial operations, completing its trial operation period and entering full commercial service as a 650 MW HVDC interconnector between Finland and Estonia. This commissioning increased the total transmission capacity between the two countries to about 1,000 MW when combined with EstLink 1.