Sandor Liive, who has long been an advocate of power exchange packages, admitted on the "Vikerhommik" radio show that, in an exceptional move ahead of this winter, he switched to a fixed-price plan.

While acknowledging that history doesn't always predict the future, Liive said that after analyzing his electricity consumption over the past 12 months and considering the upcoming significant change – Estonia's disconnection from the Russian electricity system – he decided that opting for a fixed-price plan was the prudent choice. The exact impact of this disconnection on electricity prices is still uncertain.

"What happens at the beginning of February is a positive change. We'll disconnect from the Russian grid and join the Central and Western European network, but this will definitely impact electricity prices," Liive explained. He noted that all electrical connections between Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania with Russia will be severed, meaning these countries will be responsible for maintaining frequency stability within their own grids.

"We only have one connection from Lithuania to Poland, which will be an alternating current connection. We'll finally join the Central and Western European frequency system, but this also means that we in the Baltics must keep production and consumption in balance at all times," Liive emphasized, adding that a significant change is the loss of the ability to purchase electricity from Poland.

"500 MW of capacity will go into frequency reserves, meaning it will no longer be available for commercial use," Liive said, explaining the effects of desynchronization on the Baltic price area. The impact of this change on electricity prices will become clear in the future.

Liive encouraged people to compare different electricity packages and their terms, pointing out that if someone finds a package with a price around 11 cents per kilowatt-hour, it's not a bad deal considering the current market. However, network fees must also be taken into account, which Liive said are likely to rise rapidly and already make up a significant portion of electricity bills.

Looking ahead, the future of energy includes wind, solar, nuclear power and storage options, according to Liive. He stressed that long-term plans shouldn't focus solely on optimizing the average power exchange price, which is often used to publicly justify investments. Instead, attention must also be paid to developments on the grid side, as the construction of large wind farms will clearly require extensive and expensive grid upgrades. Similarly, integrating more solar energy will necessitate significant and costly upgrades to the distribution network.

"All of these costs will be reflected in our bills, so the full price needs to be considered when making long-term decisions. I believe that the market is already saturated with wind and solar energy," Liive noted.

"Let investors and businesses develop as much wind and solar as possible for the market. And we should keep our old oil shale plants ready for energy security, so they don't get shut down. Of course, the long-term solution is that we need our own nuclear power plant."

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