Rolands Irklis, Chairman of the Board of the Latvian electricity transmission system operator Augstsprieguma tīkls (AST) said that to connect to the European grid, several infrastructure facilities have already been built in Latvia since 2009.
"For example, two connections to Finland, one connection to Sweden, and one connection to Poland. The project aims to synchronize with continental European systems through a Lithuanian-Polish connection. So there is also a catalog of measures from the European side that we have to implement, and at the moment it is about 80% implemented. And within this framework, we are then developing various new infrastructure projects, one of which is synchronous compensators, of which there will be nine in the Baltics, three in each country. We are also developing storage technologies in Latvia and Lithuania to provide capacity reserves. If a large generation source suddenly goes down, these batteries can provide additional energy to the grid, thus ensuring grid stability and frequency stability," said Irklis.
Latvia has completely stopped importing and exporting electricity to and from Russia and Belarus since Russia's war against Ukraine, and synchronization with Europe is the last step to achieve independence in electricity supply, which is essential for national security, according to the Minister for Climate and Energy, Kaspars Melnis (Greens and Farmers Union).
Latvia has invested almost half a billion euros, or 465 million euros, to connect to the European grid.
Irklis, the head of AST, said that most of the money has been raised from EU funds, and some of the costs are already included in the electricity tariff.
"More than €300 million has been raised from European Union funds, with another €90 million from congestion management revenues. The costs attributable to the tariff are only around €70 million, and we include internal infrastructure reinforcement projects such as the Kurzeme Loop or, for example, the third Latvia-Estonia interconnection, which was built a few years ago, and these costs are actually already included in the existing tariff. So from January 1 2026, if we look at the end-users' bills, the impact could be something like 0.1-0.2%.
"Where we will have additional costs from next year is in maintaining capacity reserves, but here again we will be in a common market - both in the Baltic market and interconnected with the European markets so that this has as little impact as possible on Latvian and Baltic electricity consumers," Irklis explained.
The Climate and Energy Minister assessed that electricity prices would increase after joining the European grid, but only slightly.
"The increase in electricity prices, if there is one, will be very minimal, we are talking about something like literally a few percent.
"But the question will be different - more about how traders will use it. And what is more, we have a lot of long-term contracts for several years, and there the trader has already assessed the risks and they are already priced into the current long-term contracts," said Melnis.
The electricity prices offered by traders to households, which are currently in the range of a few euros, will continue to be available to everyone on Energija24.lv. Competition among traders is quite high, which is good news for electricity consumers.
