Tunnel boring works for the Spain-France electricity interconnection completed
Today tunnelling works for the electricity interconnection between Spain and France was completed with the arrival of the Albera tunnel boring machine at the meeting point with its French counterpart Canigó. The tunnel, 3.5 m in diameter and 8.5 kilometres in length, runs parallel to the high-speed train line and links the municipalities of Jonquera in Spain and Montesquieu-des-albères in France, and allows the 320 kV direct-current line to electrically link up Spain with France through the Pyrenees with minimal environmental impact.
The tunnel forms an important part of the electricity interconnection project between France and Spain promoted by Inelfe, the company 50% owned by Red Eléctrica de España (REE) and 50% by Réseau de Transport d'Électricité (RTE) and joins the towns of Santa Llogaia, situated next to Figueres and Baixàs, a town near Perpignan, through an underground direct-current line, 65 kilometres in length.
The interconnection between Spain and France will increase the electricity exchange capacity between both countries from 1400 MW to 2800 MW and will save the emission of 2.3 million tons of CO2 per year. It will strengthen the security of the electricity supply at both regional and national levels and will allow the production from generating power stations to be maximised and allow the integration of a greater amount of renewable energy into the grid.
The technologies chosen for this project are a global innovation, both by the length of the underground line and due to the technology of the cables and converter stations at these levels of voltage and power (two phases of 1000 MW each).
The tunnel construction works, which began in March 2012 on the Spanish side and in October 2012 on the French side, will be fully completed in January 2014, once all the necessary services are installed in the gallery currently under construction by Dragados-Eiffage.
In the coming weeks, dismantling of the Albera tunnel boring machine will begin. It has drilled the gallery from the Spanish side and today completed its mission when it met up with the Canigó tunnel boring machine. The latter completed its drilling on the French side in early March and is currently being dismantled.
The project that has a budget of 700 million euros and has been declared of European interest, is receiving funding from the European Union up to 225 million euros as part of the European Energy Programme for Recovery (EEPR), and has been granted a loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) amounting to 350 million euros.
Redeia Corporacion S.A. (formerly Red Eléctrica Corporación, S.A.) specializes in electricity transmission services and operation of electric networks. Net sales (including intragroup) by activity break down as follows:
- management and operation of electrical networks (82.7%): owning, at the end of 2022, of a network of 45,019 km of high-voltage lines and over 600 substations. The group also offers consulting, engineering, construction and maintenance services. Spain accounts for 95.8% of net sales;
- management and operation of satellite telecommunications networks (11.2%);
- management and operation of fiber optic telecoms networks (4.8%);
- other (1.3%).
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: Spain (88.9%), Europe (1.6%) and other (9.5%).
RED ELECTRICA CORPORACION SA 
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