Undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia experiences outage — capacity reduced to 35% as Finnish authorities investigate

Estlink 2, an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia, has unexpectedly been disrupted at around 12:26 pm local time (10:26 am GMT) on Christmas Day. While Finland Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said that the outage hasn’t affected the country’s power supply, Reuters said that it did reduce the availability capacity between the two countries to 358 megawatts from its designed 1,106-megawatt installed capacity. The incident comes after the suspected sabotage of two undersea internet cables that connect Finland and Sweden to the rest Europe.

At the time of the incident, some 658 megawatts of power have been flowing from Finland to Estonia, says Finnish national electricity transmission operator Fingrid. Estonia’s electricity transmission operator Elering has also acknowledged the incident but is yet to report any disruption in its electrical supply.

There are two undersea power cables between Finland and Estonia—Estlink 1, which is west of Helsinki and Tallinna and has a capacity of 350 megawatts, and Estlink 2, which lies east of both cities and has a larger capacity of 650 megawatts. Finnish public broadcaster Yle says that Estlink 2 was unserviceable for several months earlier this year as it was undergoing maintenance, but the connection has since been restored in September. Because of this, Fingrid Operations Manager Arto Pahkin said that action by external forces could not be discounted.

“The possibility of sabotage cannot be ruled out. However, we are examining the situation as a whole and will provide information once the cause is identified,” says Pahkin. He also said, “An investigation into the incident has been initiated.” Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo also weighed in on the matter, saying on X (formerly Twitter) (machine translated), “Authorities are still on standby over Christmas and are investigating the matter.”

The Baltic Sea is surrounded by NATO members, and many cables cross the area which allow the alliance to easily communicate, transfer data, and trade electricity. These cables are often marked on nautical charts to help ships avoid them, especially when they drop anchor. However, although rare, accidental damage to these cables still happens and they rarely make the news.

But with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine heightening tensions in Europe, everyone has been on their toes. This was further exacerbated with the suspected sabotage of two undersea internet cables that connect Finland and Sweden to the rest Europe. With Russia having direct access to Baltic Sea as well, it would be easy for it to conduct operations in the area to disrupt the alliance.