While building LitPol Link, Poles distance themselves from Visaginas nuclear plant project

Poland has suspended its participation in the Visaginas project.

It is said that the planned power interconnection is aimed at creating a common electricity market area, which is beneficial both to Poland and Lithuania, the magazine wrote.

"The key aim of LitPol Link is to connect the Baltic electricity markets to that of continental Europe," Henryk Majchrzak, the chairman of Poland's transmission system operator Polskie Sieci Elektroenergetyczne Operator, has said recently.

Piotr Grochala, chairman of Eltel Networks Rzeszow, which is in a consortium that has won a tender for engineering design, environmental impact assessment and project development on the Polish side of LitPol Link, said that the project, once implemented, will make it possible to supply electricity from Poland to Lithuania or vice versa, if needed.

The northeastern Polish region has only one power plant, in Ostroleka, and, therefore, a chance of using Lithuanian electricity system generators in case of emergency would be welcome.

"With the help of LitPol Link, NordBalt and Poland's existing power interconnection with Sweden, the aim is to create a new Baltic electricity ring involving Poland and the Baltic states," said Grochala.

The consortium of Eltel companies - Eltel Networks Rzeszow, Energoprojekt Krakow, and Eltel Networks Olsztyn - are working on the design and development of LitPol Link's 113-kilometer section from the electricity substation of the town of Elk to Poland's border with Lithuania.

The consortium is to prepare all the required technical and servitude documentation, up to obtaining a permit for the construction of the interconnection. The value of the contract is around 80 million zlotys (EUR 19 m), but unlike in Lithuania, it includes compensation to private landowners whose land is needed for the power link.

LitPol Link is one of Lithuania's strategic energy projects. The interconnection will link the electricity transmission infrastructure of the three Baltic countries to that of Western Europe and pave the way for an integration of the electricity markets. The link is planned to be fully operational by the end of 2015 with a capacity of 500 megawatts, to be raised to 1,000 MW by 2020.

Poland has received 213 million euros in EU aid for upgrading transmission lines in the northeastern part of the country as part of the LitPol Link project.