IEEE Sweden first Historical Milestone – the Gotland HVDC Link

On Nov 2016, the IEEE Board of Directors approved the IEEE History Committee’s recommendation, that proposal be approved as an IEEE Milestone in Electrical Engineering and Computing with the following citation:

Gotland High Voltage Direct Current Link, 1954

The Gotland HVDC Link was the world’s first commercial HVDC transmission link using the first submarine HVDC cable. It connected mainland Sweden to Gotland Island. The 96 km cable used mass- impregnated technology. The Swedish manufacturer ASEA produced the link for Vattenfall, the state- owned utility. The project used mercury-arc rectifiers for the 20 MW/100 kV HVDC converters, developed by an ASEA-Vattenfall team led by Dr. Uno Lamm.

Instrumental in this process have been ABB and Vattenfall, from IEEE Prof Olof Samuelsson Lund Institute of Technology, PE/PEL chair Prof Lina Bertling Tjernberg, and Sweden Section Chair Mats Edvinsson.

At the moment efforts are ongoing on the arrangements of the dedication ceremony in 2017.

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