Historic disconnection from BRELL
Historic disconnection from BRELL
This weekend in Lithuania was marked by a historic event – on Saturday morning (2025-02-08 9:00), Lithuania’s power lines were disconnected from the common BRELL system with the Russian Kaliningrad region and Belarus. Latvia and Estonia soon followed suit.
After the disconnection, all three countries began operating in isolated mode, and on Sunday, according to the Ministry of Energy, at 2:05 p.m. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia successfully synchronized their power systems with the continental European synchronous area.
Before disconnecting from the Russian system, Lithuania’s power transmission lines with the Russian Kaliningrad region will first be disconnected, which will continue to operate in isolation, followed by the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian lines with Russia and Belarus.
After disconnecting all lines during the isolated operation test scheduled for Saturday morning, the three Baltic operators – Litgrid, Latvian AST and Estonian Elering – will independently control the system frequency, testing its resistance to various disturbances and readiness to operate in isolation.
The system frequency will be managed in a coordinated manner by the three operators in their control centers. Both during the weekend and after, the frequency in Lithuania will be controlled by the Litgrid system control and data security center located in Viršuliškės.
Although the Baltic countries have not purchased Russian and Belarusian electricity for several years, they are still in the Russian IPS/UPS system, the frequency of which is centrally regulated in Moscow.
“The Lithuanian electricity system has been dependent on Russia for as many as 65 years – more than half a century. Now we are turning this page for good: together with Latvia and Estonia, we are connecting to the continental European electricity grid and consolidating our energy independence,” said Energy Minister Žygimantas Vaičiūnas.
Before the press conference, having received news by phone that the Baltic States had synchronized with Europe, G. Nausėda, the president of Lithuania, responded to the interviewer by quoting the title of the famous German film “Farewell, Lenin!”.
The Baltic States are connected to the continental European synchronous zone through the Lithuanian-Polish electricity connection “LitPol Link”.
Operating synchronously with Western Europe, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia will independently and in coordination with other countries in this zone manage the frequency of their electricity systems and take care of the balancing of the networks themselves.
Operating in the Russian IPS/UPS system, the frequency is centrally regulated in Moscow.
In addition to the land connection “LitPol Link”, the Baltic States are also connected to Northern Europe – the Lithuania-Sweden maritime connection “NordBalt” and the Estonia-Finland maritime connections “EstLink 1” and “EstLink2”.
By 2030, another land connection between Lithuania and Poland is planned to be built - the Harmony Link for trade.
In 2023, the installed capacity of solar power plants exceeded the symbolic threshold of 1 gigawatt (1,000 MW) to achieve this goal.
The author of this article, like many Lithuanians, has contributed to achieving this goal by purchasing part of a remote solar power plant.
However, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia would never have been able to implement these projects alone, as EU funding amounted to at least half, and sometimes even more, for example, 75 percent in the case of synchronization.
During the synchronization process, 420 km of new electricity transmission lines were built in Lithuania, 230 km of existing lines were reconstructed, and a total of 13 new network switchgears and transformer substations were built or modernized.
In total, more than 1.6 billion euros were invested in the synchronization project in the Baltic States and Poland, of which about 1.2 billion euros were allocated from the EU Energy Infrastructure Networks Facility.
As if on purpose, after synchronization with Europe, average electricity prices shot up, becoming as expensive as 50%.
According to the interviewees, the increased electricity price was due to colder than usual weather in February, increased electricity consumption, low solar and wind power production, the non-functioning submarine cable “EstLink 2” between Finland and Estonia, as well as increased production of thermal power plants, which uses more expensive natural gas.
The non-functioning “EstLink 2” cable, which should be repaired by the end of the summer, will increase wholesale electricity prices, but this should be offset by the increasing solar energy production in March.
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