Planning Starts on Setting the Location of a New Estonian-Latvian High-Voltage Line

The governments of Pärnu and Viljandi counties, the transmission system operator Elering and Ramboll Estonia signed a general contract in mid-March to produce a county plan for the TEC II 330 kV overhead line that will stretch from Kilingi-Nõmme to Riga, as well as to conduct the corresponding strategic environmental impact assessment (SEIA). According to the contract, the plan must be ready by the spring of next year.

On Estonian territory, the Kilingi-Nõmme to Riga TEC II power line is planned to pass through the Saarde and Abja rural municipalities. The line’s exact route will be defined in the Viljandi and Pärnu county plans, which will be produced taking into account the peculiarities imposed by the Planning Act with regard to the choice of location for a linear structure such as a high-voltage line.

The presentation of initial positions on the planning and the SEIA program is scheduled for this May; the presentation of draft solutions – for the summer; and the initial planning solution must be completed by the end of the year. All planning stages will involve public discussions in the rural municipalities of Abja and Saarde, to present the planning solution to local residents.

The planned Kilingi-Nõmme to Riga TEC II power line, alongside the Harku-Lihula-Sindi 330/110 kV line, will expand the 330 kV electrical grid that is vital to the supply of electricity throughout all of Estonia, and will establish the new 330 kV interconnection between Estonia and Latvia that is included in the Development Plan of the Estonian Electricity Sector.

The new interconnection has a significant security policy effect for Estonia and the rest of the Baltics – the existence of this power line is a technical prerequisite for the desynchronisation of the Baltics from Russia’s electrical grid, and their connection to the synchronous grid of Continental Europe.

The new 330 kV overhead line will remove the bottleneck on the Estonian-Latvian border, raising the transmission capacity by 500-600 megawatts. The interconnection will create a transit corridor for the Estonian-Finnish EstLink 2 and the Lithuanian-Swedish NordBalt interconnections, thereby reducing the Baltics’ energy dependence on Russia. In addition, the overhead line will provide connection opportunities for electricity producers in Southern Estonia and in Latvia.