Grid Other

Greek transmission system operator IPTO, in a recent meeting with Eunice Group representatives leading the Greece-Africa Power (GAP) Interconnector consortium, informed promoters that the Cretan grid cannot take on any further interconnections. IPTO officials cited the cumulative loading of the Crete-Peloponnese and Crete-Athens HVDC ties together with the planned Cyprus-Crete subsea cable connection of the EuroAsia Interconnector as having exhausted the island's capacity. They warned that any additional major interconnection involving Crete would hamper the local grid's ability to operate safely and reliably. As reported by EnergyPress on 23 March 2023, an alternative route not involving Crete would therefore be needed for GAP. The communication was informal — no formal grid connection application had been filed — but materially constrained the project's originally proposed Marsa Matruh to Atherinolakkos topology, in which a 2,000 MW HVDC bipole would land on south-eastern Crete and inject into the Hellenic transmission system at the Atherinolakkos converter site. The constraint provided strategic context for Eunice's later (October 2025) repositioning of GAP toward off-grid green hydrogen production on Crete, sidestepping the grid-injection problem entirely rather than re-routing the cable.