OREANDA-NEWS. March 22, 2010. Aloyzas Koryzna, Chief Executive Officer of Lietuvos Energija AB, and Mikael Odenberg, Chief Executive Officer of Affarsverket Svenska Kraftnat signed a cooperation agreement regarding the implementation of the NordBalt project. This agreement aims to define conditions, at which Lietuvos Energija and Affarsverket Svenska Kraftnat will jointly implement NordBalt power link project by interconnecting the electricity systems of Lithuania and Sweden.

The cooperation of the parties will consist of three key stages – the link‘s development, construction and post-construction stages. It was agreed that ownership of the infrastructure, resulting from the construction of the power bridge, will be split by the parties as follows: Lietuvos Energija will own the converter station at Klaipeda transformer substation, the cable, stretching from Klaipeda substation to the sea, and 50 per cent of the submarine cable. The respective share of the cable and link‘s infrastructure on Sweden‘s territory will be owned by Svenska Kraftnat.

The deal also includes an agreement regarding the link‘s funding and the conditions as well as procedure of use of the EU support, allocated to the construction of the link. The prospective EU support totals EUR 131 million (LTL 452.3 million). The cost of the power link is estimated at EUR 552 million (LTL 1.906 billion).

The agreement also includes establishment of a supervisory committee, the members of which will be appointed in equal numbers by each party. The committee is to consider key issues of the project implementation and coordination of activities of the agreement parties.

“Subsequent to the implementation of the NordBalt project, the Baltic and Scandinavian power systems will be interconnected, while Lithuania’s integration into the power system of the Baltic Sea region will allow us to improve the security and reliability of electricity supply to domestic consumers – that is one of the most important strategic tasks of our company“, - says Aloyzas Koryzna, CEO of Lietuvos Energija.

“The cooperation agreement we have just signed is a further step towards integrating the future Baltic electricity market with the one in the Nordic region, says Mikael Odenberg CEO of Svenska Kraftnat. “This agreement gives us a joint basis to continue work on the project.”

Preparatory work is running smoothly: the Baltic seabed study was carried out in order to choose a safe route of the cable; Voltage Source Converter (VSC) interconnection technology was chosen for the high voltage direct current (HVDC) submarine cable.

The length of the submarine cable is approximately 450 km, 400 km of which is to be laid across the bottom of the Baltic Sea. The interconnection is due to be commissioned into operation in 2016, while the projected approximate lifetime of the cable will be 30 years. The line’s capacity - 700 MW, voltage - 300 kV.

Lietuvos Energija is the owner of electricity transmission (110-330 kV) grid and through its daughter companies performs the activities of electricity transmission operator, market operator and other activities in the field of electric power.