Connection to Elering power grid now available in less time after signing electricity agreement

Elering has purchased the equipment necessary for building connection points and selected builders to speed up the construction of standard connection points for new customers joining the transmission network and to establish new compact substations.

Elering's objective is to make it easy and efficient for customers to join the Estonia’s electricity and gas transmission system, in order to support Estonia’s economic development. “To this point, Elering’s practice was to initiate a procurement for equipment and construction work only after entering into a connection agreement with a new customer, but now, after the change, it is possible to enter into a construction contract for building a standard 110-kilovolt connection point already with a qualified contractor, who will install equipment procured by Elering earlier. This will allow the equipment delivery period to be skipped and depending on the complexity of the project, the process of establishing a new connection can be shortened by several months and in some cases up to a year,“ said the chairman of Elering’s management board, Taavi Veskimägi.

The advance selection of equipment and contractors will allow existing depreciated substations to be converted, within a shorter space of time than before, into compact substations in places where electricity consumption has decreased significantly.

In a procurement completed last year, Elering purchased the necessary capacity switches, current transformers, voltage transformers, measurement transformers, earthing switches and disconnection switches necessary for establishing 110-kilovolt connection points and compact substations. The equipment was delivered by the Estonian branch of Siemens OY and they cost over 0.8 million euros.

Elering qualified seven tenderers for building the connections – ABB, Empower, Leonhard Weiss Energy, Merko Infra, the Estonian branch of Siemens OY, and two pairs of joint tenderers, TMV Power and TMV Service OY, and Viru RMT and EPCM Consulting.