Jan 4, 2007, 12:16 GMT
Tallinn - A ground-breaking power bridge between Finland and Estonia opened to commercial use on Thursday, linking the Baltic states to European grids for the first time.
'The cable was opened at midnight, and everything is going very well. So far, the link has been running at 80 per cent capacity from Estonia to Finland,' Iveri Marukashvili, spokesman for Estonian power company Eesti Energia, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
'Power also started moving from Finland to Estonia this morning: the cable can work in both directions at once,' he added. It was not clear which of the Baltic states had bought the power, he said.
The double cable, known as Estlink, runs 105 kilometres under the Gulf of Finland from Espoo, in southern Finland, to Harku in northern Estonia. It was inaugurated on 4 December, but problems in testing led to delays in commercial exploitation.
The project was co-funded by the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian national power firms and two Finnish power companies.
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