Lithuania measured its flexibility gap. Latvia hasn't published one.
Litgrid and ESO have published Lithuania's first flexibility needs assessment, counting Power-to-X among the solutions alongside storage and demand response. We look at what that means for Latvia's congested connection queue, and why a Latvian equivalent is overdue.
EVENTSNEWS
HydrogenLatvia
8/21/20263 min read
Connection capacity is one of the practical constraints on hydrogen project development in Latvia, alongside offtake and cost of capital. Our neighbours have just published an analysis that changes how that constraint can be argued, and we think it deserves more attention in Riga than it is currently getting.
Lithuania has put a number on its flexibility gap
Litgrid, together with distribution operator ESO, has published Lithuania's first assessment of the flexibility its electricity system will need. Their figure: flexibility demand of 4.36 GW today, rising to 7.13 GW by 2035. Around 3 GW of new flexible capacity to find over a decade. These are the operators' own numbers, and the assessment is to be updated every two years.
What matters for us is the list of solutions they assessed. Storage, demand response, flexible generation, cross-border exchange, electrification — and Power-to-X, sitting in the same table as the batteries rather than in a paragraph about 2050.
Latvia already prices flexibility at the connection point
Latvia is not starting from nothing here, and it is worth being accurate about that. AST offers a flexible connection service, and it has published the capacity available under it: 5,860 MW for new renewable generation, split across the regions — 1,448 MW in Riga, 1,308 MW in Vidzeme, 1,135 MW in Kurzeme, 1,062 MW in Zemgale and 907 MW in Latgale. Until 31 December 2026, capacity is reserved free of charge only through the flexible service, and only once a connection agreement is signed and the project is ready to start construction.
That is a deliberate design. It ends speculative capacity holding, and it establishes the principle that a connection which yields under system stress is worth more to the operator than one that does not. Latvian hydrogen ecosystem stakeholders should read those figures as AST's published position and check them against the current page before using them, since the regional split moves as agreements are signed.
The gap is what happens after connection. Flexibility is recognised as a condition of getting connected, but there is no published assessment of how much flexibility the system will need over the coming decade, or which resources count as able to supply it. An electrolyser can accept a flexible connection today. What it cannot do is see what that flexibility will be worth in 2032.
Latvia needs its own flexibility needs assessment
This is the ask, plainly. Latvia has a transmission development plan, capacity statistics and a working flexible connection service. What it does not have, as far as we can find, is a published, regularly updated assessment of how much flexibility the system will need and which technologies are counted as able to supply it — the demand side of the same question AST already answers on the supply side.
That absence has consequences beyond tidiness. Without it, every developer models the flexibility value of their asset privately and differently. Investors discount what they cannot benchmark. And when flexibility procurement rules eventually arrive, they arrive without a public evidence base that anyone outside the operator has had a chance to argue with.
Lithuania has now set a reference point our own institutions can be measured against. A Latvian equivalent would need to answer three things:
How much flexibility the system needs, by year, out to at least 2035.
Which resource types are counted as eligible to provide it — explicitly including flexible electrolysis, not by implication.
How often it gets refreshed, so projects can be timed against it rather than guessing.
None of that requires new legislation. It requires a decision to publish.
The 27 August presentation is worth a morning
Litgrid and ESO are presenting the report's findings publicly on 27 August, with registration open. We would encourage anyone in the Latvian hydrogen ecosystem with a project of meaningful size to attend, or send someone who can follow the technical detail.
Not for the headline numbers — those are already public. Go for the qualification questions: what minimum bid size a flexibility product will carry, what response time is required, whether sustained downward flexibility is procured at all. Those parameters decide whether an electrolyser is a market participant or a spectator, and they are being drafted now. Lithuania's answers will become the regional default simply because they will exist first.
What we are taking from this
A neighbouring system operator has done the analysis, published it, and counted Power-to-X inside it. That is a useful precedent and a slightly uncomfortable comparison. Latvian hydrogen ecosystem stakeholders now have something concrete to point at when asking our own institutions for the same transparency — and a short window to shape rules that will apply across the Baltic system whether we participate in writing them or not.
Source: LinkedIn post