Lithuania's balancing market outgrew its state battery

Two administrative dates fell inside the week of 29 October to 4 November, and both of them decide who gets access to something scarce. In Lithuania, the volume of balancing capacity the transmission operator buys from the state-owned battery fleet dropped again on 1 November, on the regulator's finding that commercial storage can now cover the need by itself. In Great Britain, the backstop for the last of the connection offers behind the 2030 clean power plan expired on 31 October.

Lithuania is buying less balancing capacity from its state battery

The Lithuanian energy regulator VERT approved a proposal from transmission system operator Litgrid to cut the balancing capacity services it buys from Energy Cells, the state-owned storage operator, by a further 10 MW. From 1 November the figure is 20 MW, down from 30 MW, and it is the second reduction this year after a cut from 40 MW to 30 MW that took effect in May. VERT announced the decision on 22 October and based it on Litgrid's assessment of the Baltic balancing capacity market, which found supply sufficient: the number of participants able to hold system balance and frequency in real time at competitive prices is growing, supply has been rising since July, and storage capacity on its own is enough to meet the market's needs without Energy Cells taking part. Litgrid's assessment expects the 10 MW reduction to have a minimal effect on balancing capacity prices, and VERT says the volume can keep falling, as far as being dropped altogether, once market participants can hold up supply on their own. The regulator approved an extension of the Litgrid contract with Energy Cells only to the end of 2026 (VERT, via Elektronika.lt).

Energy Cells has never been an ordinary competitor in that market. Under a resource exit strategy the three Baltic transmission operators set out in November 2025, resources of this kind count as demand reduction resources: they are offered at zero price, their owners are not remunerated for them, and they shrink the volume of balancing capacity the operators have to buy from everybody else. Between February and September 2025 that mechanism cut total Baltic balancing capacity costs eightfold. Latvia uses AST's own battery the same way, with 8 MW of FCR and 32 MW of aFRR in both directions, planned for three years and no later than November 2028. Estonia uses the Kiisa plant, 250 MW of upward mFRR and 40 MW of downward, under an EU derogation that also runs to November 2028, with the government having authorised Elering to prepare a sale. Each national regulator may reduce or suspend its own (Elering, November 2025).

The supply that made the latest cut possible shows up in the connection figures. Litgrid connected eight battery parks totalling 392 MW and 919 MWh in August and September, taking the Lithuanian fleet to roughly 1.3 GW, and the regulator now reads balancing capacity as being in sufficient supply (European Current, 30 October).

For anyone holding prequalified capacity in the Baltic reserve markets, this works in two directions at once. Zero-priced volume leaving the stack is demand coming back to the market, and it is coming back in aFRR, the product Energy Cells has been covering. At the same time, the reason it is leaving is that enough commercial storage arrived to make it unnecessary, which is the same crowd now bidding for the returning volume. The useful thing to do with that is to check which products your assets are actually prequalified for, and to look past the ones that paid best in the first year after synchronisation. Latvia and Estonia are on the same path with a 2028 marker, so a portfolio spread across the three countries has three different withdrawal clocks to plan against.

Energy markets do not work the same way in Estonia as they do in Bulgaria, Romania, Finland or Greece, and Fusebox provides one operating layer that normalizes asset management and market access wherever a portfolio sits. The platform coordinates PV, BESS and flexible loads, and its portfolio orchestration carries groups, rules and participation logic across regions and TSOs, with prioritized activations that protect assets and delivery reliability. Fusebox has customers in 13 markets, all run from the operational hub in Tallinn.

Talk to Fusebox about prequalifying your Baltic assets →

Britain's deadline for its last pre-2030 connection offers fell on 31 October

NESO wrote to Ofgem on 25 September asking to replace 30 September with 31 October 2026 as the deadline for issuing Gate 2 Phase 1 connection offers, a timetable set by standard condition E12.14(c) of its licence. It was the second time that date had moved. The operator said it had issued around 75% of the offers needed for 2030, and traced the slippage to National Grid Electricity Transmission, which told a 15 July meeting that it needed two more weeks for distribution-connected small and medium embedded Grid Supply Point construction offers and four more weeks for transmission-connected and large embedded ones, on grounds of complexity and further network redesign (NESO letter to Ofgem).

The letter puts numbers on the affected set. Up to 37 transmission owner construction offers were at risk, about 10% of all Gate 2 Phase 1 offers, and they are mostly the more complex transmission-connected and embedded projects. Around 25 further offers needed more time for other reasons, mainly because the customer asked for it. In England and Wales, 133 of 158 distribution Gate 2 Phase 1 offers had gone out, and NESO planned a run rate of 10 to 15 offers a week to clear the remainder. It asked for no change to the Gate 1 or Phase 2 dates, and on the delivery timeline the industry published in February, Gate 2 Phase 2 transmission and large embedded offers run from early September 2026 to mid-January 2027, with Phase 2 distribution offers from mid-October 2026 to mid-March 2027 (NESO connections reform timeline, February 2026).

Ofgem granted the move, calling it justified, proportionate and in the interests of consumers, and put the number of affected offers at about 62. The regulator pointed to the extension it had already allowed National Grid Electricity Transmission at both distribution and transmission level, and to a small number of Gate 2 Phase 1 offers NESO had recently added. The same regulator had found in September that connections reform was a critical objective on which NESO had underperformed (Solar Power Portal, 7 October, and European Current, 2 October).

A connection offer is the document that fixes a date and a connection point, so a month of movement on a tenth of a tranche is a month of movement on the financing timetable sitting behind it. For the BESS asset owners and C&I portfolio managers waiting in the British queue, the sensible response is to treat the offer date as a planning input with error bars rather than a fixed point, and to work out what a site can earn under the capacity it has already been offered, including services it could sell before the full connection arrives. If you would rather explore that quietly first, the Fusie knowledge bot will answer platform questions without a meeting.

Let us look at the connection you already hold →

What to watch

• Whether VERT cuts the Energy Cells volume again or ends it outright, with the Litgrid contract running only to the end of 2026 (VERT).
• Latvia's AST battery and Estonia's Kiisa plant, both due to leave the balancing stack by November 2028, with either national regulator able to move sooner (Elering).
• Litgrid and ESO's first flexibility market development plan, now out for consultation, which sets what the Lithuanian system will ask flexibility to supply (European Current).
• Whether NESO confirms that the final Gate 2 Phase 1 transmission offers were issued, with Phase 2 distribution offers running to mid-March 2027 (NESO).
• Czechia's draft 2027 price decisions, which introduce a reserved input power price and a maximum offtake power price at extra-high and high voltage and abolish the reserved capacity price; comments close 11 November (ERU).
• Romania's draft order amending Annex 2 to Order 127/2021, covering restrictions on balance responsible parties; comments close 11 November (ANRE).