Erkki Sapp, a board member at grid distributor Elering, said: "This week, there has been less wind across the Baltic states, and slightly higher electricity consumption due to temperatures being a few degrees colder, and, in addition, a slight increase in gas prices compared with last week—of roughly 10 percent," said.

Marko Allikson, board member of Baltic Energy Partners, a trading company, meanwhile told "Aktuaalne kaamera": "Over the past three months, more gas has been withdrawn from storage facilities than in previous years."

"This has mainly been caused by the 'dunkelflaute' phenomenon, where there has been little wind but a lot of cold weather. During such periods, gas power plants are used, and gas is taken directly from storage. This trend is particularly noticeable in Central and Western Europe," Allikson went on.

The price of gas on the Dutch Title Transfer (TTF) gas exchange, which serves as a reference market, has reached its highest level in nearly two years, and experts predict higher gas prices in the near future compared to last year too.

On Wednesday, the average electricity price reached a record high for this year—€191 per megawatt-hour.

Raul Kotov, board member of Elenger, as Eesti Gaas is internationally branded, put the figure at €55-€57 per Mwh as "the forecast for the next three to four months. After that, prices could start to decline slightly again."

The Baltic states are also lacking some of their regular electricity connections at present; the 650MW Estlink 2 cable is out of operation due to the trailing anchor damage caused over Christmas time, while of the 700-megawatt Lithuania-Sweden cable connection, 100 megawatts will remain in reserve until next week.

The latter too was damaged late last year.

Additionally, the 500MW Lithuania-Poland LitPol cable is entirely offline, with 150 MW set to return to the market in two weeks; the remaining 350MW will remain out of the market to maintain frequency stability.

Allikson noted that with more normal levels of availability, "today's price would be €60 per megawatt-hour lower."

Over the weekend, Estonia left the Russian electricity system and joined the Continental European electricity grid. This happened across three phases and applied to Latvia and Lithuania too: First, the three countries disconnected from the Belarusian and Russian BRELL grid, starting with Lithuania and working northwards. On Saturday and into Sunday, the three countries were an energy "island" to themselves, before successfully synchronizing with the European grid on the Sunday. No major or lengthy power outages were reported over this period; the desynchronization followed the expiry of the BRELL agreement with the three Baltic states.

Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT reports at least 11 cables running along the Baltic seabed have been damaged since October 2023.

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