Lithuania’s system of electricity storage facilities is essential to ensure the security of Lithuania’s energy system and its ability to operate in isolated mode.
Lithuania closed the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in 2009 and currently operates synchronously with the Russia-Belarus power system, though a de-synch is planned in early 2025. To achieve a climate-neutral energy sector, Lithuania will have to more than triple the amount of renewable energy generated.
The energy storage system, which will provide Lithuania with an instantaneous isolated operation electricity reserve until synchronisation with the continental European networks (CEN), will be used after synchronisation for the integration of energy produced from renewable sources.
A concession agreement was signed in the following year ( Ministry of Energy, 2012 ). Here it needs to be highlighted that in the years leading to the new strategy, renewables already played a significant role in the Lithuanian electricity sector (see Fig. 1 ).
At the end of July 2021, the Government of the Republic of Lithuania appointed Energy cells, a company of the EPSO-G Group, as the operator of the instantaneous isolated operation electricity reserve for Lithuania’s electricity storage facilities and entrusted it with the management of the electricity storage facilities system.
The current situation in the Lithuanian electricity sector is quite unusual and complicated. It is unusual, because throughput capacity of all intersystem power lines significantly exceeds the total Lithuanian electricity demand.