Baltic States – CIS, Energy, Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Legislation

Since the three Baltic countries and Poland have not been able to reach an agreement in regard to synchronization with the Western European power grid, it would be reasonable to increase the capability to function as an energy island if Russia should cut us off from its power grid, chief of communications at Elering Ain Koster told BNS on September 19th.

He added that if Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania increase that capacity, they would win some extra time to reach an agreement on synchronization.

On September 19^th, European Commission vice-president for energy union Maros Sefcovic visited Elering's emergency reserve power stations built for increasing the reliability of the power grid. The main topic of the meeting was the desynchronization of power grids.

Elering introduced to Sefcovic the circumstances which result in the need to desynchronize the Baltic countries as well as the requirements the process needs to fulfil.

"Our first priority is to find a short-term solution which would keep lights on in Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian homes if, for some reason, we should unexpectedly separate from the Russian joint power grid," CEO of Elering Taavi Veskimagi said after the meeting.

This would provide the opportunity to work out a long-term solutions for cooperation of the Baltic power grid. "A long-term solution would have to be market-based, financially acceptable to consumers and at the same time guarantee operational reliability on a sufficient level," Veskimagi said.

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Pola have so far not reached an agreement on how to desynchronize the Baltic power grid from the Russian and Belarusian power system and synchronize it with the Western European one.

The European Commission's Joint Research Center said in its findings that the best synchronization scheme for the Baltic states is via two LitPol Link interconnections, which would entail a cost of 770-960 million euros, while the synchronization via a single link would cost 900 million euros. Synchronizing the Baltic states with the Nordic region is estimated to cost from 1.36-1.41 billion euros.

After Latvia and Estonia voiced doubts about the single-link synchronization, Lithuania's electricity transmission operator Litgrid proposed to build the second link after 2025, the planned date for project completion and disconnection from the Russian BRELL electricity ring.