Dr Ellinas, whose opinions I greatly respect, asks for greater clarity for the Giant Sea Interconnector.

I submit that we have all the information we need to scrap the project. There is no study that shows that it would reduce the Cyprus electricity cost. The projected cost exceeds €2bn of which the EU will pay €657m and Cyprus at least €1.4b. We have no control of how foolishly the EU spends its money but why should every Cypriot man, woman and child in Cyprus pay €1,000 each so that bureaucrats in Cyprus and the. EU can say that Cyprus electricity is connected to Europe.

Things are worse than just the cost since the size of the project, 2000MW exceeds the capacity of the Cyprus grid, which is1400MW. There is no way that either country can ship 2000MW even if either the Cyprus or the Greek grid is totally destroyed. If we can convince the EU to redirect the €657M we can do the following:

1) Buy €1bn of batteries. When I was working on electric vehicles in 2020 the cost was approaching $100/kWh. Let’s assume that with the cost of electronics to connect the batteries to the grid the cost would be €200/kWh. Thus, you get 50000kWh of batteries and since installed solar in December 2024 was 797MW you can store on average a day’s worth of electricity to be used at night thus minimising CO2 from LNG which, although better than oil, still produces only a third less CO2. The EU would surely love this.

2) Use another €1bn to buy up to date gas turbines for Dhekelia and this includes a natural gas pipeline from Vasiliko. This, together with batteries, would stabilise the grid, against the kind of blackout that occurred in Spain and other countries.

3) Admie claims that Cyprus should pay for the sunk costs of Nexans, you should point out as Dr Ellinas has suggested, there is great demand for cables and Nexans can find another customer.

4) Keravnos is absolutely right in refusing to pay the €25M to Admie. As an engineer, I would much rather interconnect with Turkey. The short underwater distance would allow conventional three phase ac cable without expensive HVDC converter. Also with the 4800MW nuclear plant at Akkuyu, would provide cheap power. Of course, Cyprus politics would not allow such a simple solution.

Linos Jacovides