Construction, Energy, EU – Baltic States, Good for Business, Lithuania

The nine compensators will each cost around 25 mln euros, or 225 miln euros in total, based on estimates by the Institute of Power Engineering in Gdansk.

Rimvydas Stilinis, chairman of the management board at Lithuania's power transmission system operator Litgrid, says the Baltic countries are set to become innovators in the European electricity sector and are likely to compete among themselves to be the first to build the compensators.

The compensators will each have a capacity of between 3 and 8 megawatts and will be hooked up to the transmission grid.  

Litgrid will conduct market research to decide where and what compensators to build in Lithuania. Global engineering giants, such as ABB and Siemens, will be invited to bid for contracts. 

On Wednesday, the Lithuanian government approved a draft Connection Agreement and a set of technical requirements. The documents have been recently approved by the Regional Group Continental Europe of the European Network of Transmission System Operators (ENTSO-E).  

Litgrid plans to sign the agreement on May 20, and Latvia and Estonia are expected to do so later. 

The approved technical scenario for the 1.5-billion-euro synchronization project calls for synchronizing the Baltic grids via the existing LitPol Link interconnection between Lithuania and Poland and a new submarine cable between the two neighboring countries. 

The new cable, named Harmony Link, is estimated to cost 650 mln euros, of which 487 mln euros are expected to be provided by the EU. 

The Baltic grids are still part of the post-Soviet BRELL ring, which also includes Russia and Belarus, and remain dependent on the control center in Moscow and the Russian electricity system.