Wexford to Wales undersea cable sold for €1bn

By Dan Walsh

The Greenlink electricity interconnector between Great Island, Campile, in south-west Wexford and Pembrokeshire in Wales has been purchased by Equitix and Baltic Cable in a deal estimated to be worth €1 billion.

The agreement with the private developers of the project, Partners Group, will take over the 504 MW electricity interconnector which runs from Wexford to Pembrokeshire on the Welsh coast, and which is likely to have a capacity to power 380,000 homes.

Greenlink is the first privately financed interconnector project in Europe, developed by the Partners Group a Swiss-US publicly listed private investment group with more than €137m in assets under management.

The cable runs between EirGrid’s Great Island substation in Wexford and the UK’s National Grid’s Pembroke substation, using high-voltage direct current (HVDC) technology, which is efficient for long-distance power transmission.

The €500m construction began in 2022, and the interconnector is now fully operational, bringing its first electricity to market on January 29 this year.

The new owners are Equitix; an investment firm with more than £11.5bn (€13.6bn) in assets under management based in 22 countries – and Baltic Cable, a Swedish firm which has operated an underwater interconnector between Sweden and Germany for 30 years.