The establishment of a new 130 kV transformer station will commence within Viscaria’s industrial area. Omexom will construct the facility on behalf of Vattenfall Eldistribution, and the station will form a central part of the electrical infrastructure required to enable the restart of Viscaria’s mine and processing plant.
The station is being built within the site area and is designed to meet the technical requirements arising from both Kiruna’s climate conditions and the energy demand of a modern mining operation. The scope includes an air-insulated 130 kV switchgear installation, new emergency power (EK) batteries, and upgraded control, protection relay, telecom and communications systems. A new control building will also be constructed, and the station will be connected to existing overhead lines. Once completed, the facility will be dimensioned for 45 MW – a prerequisite for operating both the mine and the processing plant at full capacity.
“For us at Viscaria, this represents an important step forward. The new station provides the capacity and redundancy required to restart the mine and processing plant in line with our schedule,” says Felix Gräsvik, Electrical Power Project Manager at Viscaria.
The work is being delivered as a turnkey contract, with Omexom responsible for the entire process from engineering to completed facility. The project engages a large team based in Umeå and is scheduled to be ready for commissioning in the third quarter of 2027.
“This is a technically extensive project that involves our entire team in Umeå, and we very much look forward to delivering it,” says Andreas Berggren, Business Unit Manager at Omexom Umeå.
With the new transformer station, Viscaria takes another concrete step towards building the infrastructure required for safe and long-term sustainable mining operations.