GETs to integrate large-scale renewables to Latvia grid – study

The Latvia grid hosting capacity could be increased by 40% with grid enhancing technologies (GETs), aka ‘innovative grid technologies’, a new study has found.

The EU-funded study, which was undertaken for the Latvian TSO AST by French consultancy Artelys, found that of the technologies reviewed curative redispatch would provide the greatest increase in hosting capacity, reducing renewables curtailment by around two-thirds compared to preventive redispatch, and also would deliver the greatest benefits-to-cost ratio.

Dynamic line rating, with the second best increase in hosting capacity, was found to be well suited to targeted implementation in wind-rich areas, while advanced power flow control equipment could provide high value in congested corridors.

However, battery energy storage used for the sole purpose of increasing renewables integration would not be economically viable and would require complementary value streams.

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“The integration of large amounts of renewable generation comes with the need to effectively combine different generation profiles. Beyond that, increase of the transmission capacity will be necessary,” says Arnis Daugulis, member of the management board of AST.

“Traditional grid infrastructure reinforcements, e.g. new lines, are costly and take around ten years to be built. [GETs] can often be deployed faster than traditional reinforcements, accelerating the integration of renewable energy waiting for transmission buildup.”

The basis for the study is the large increase in variable renewables in Lativa – growing from 100MW in 2022 to over 420MW in 2024 and with over 6GW in the transmission grid project connection queue, similar to trends across other Baltic countries.

This is significantly larger than the existing generation capacity in Latvia of 3.3GW and more than five times the current and short term forecast demand capacity.

The study found that the integration of renewables would be necessary to accompany the increase in demand in Latvia due to electrification and the development of hydrogen-derivatives products, with additions estimated at least 2.5GW by 2030 and 4GW by 2040.

However, the hosting capacity of the Latvian grid is estimated between 3GW by 2030 and 5GW by 2040.

In the 2030 scenarios, curtailment starts appearing around 2GW of installed renewables, while in the 2040 scenarios, due to the increase in demand, significant congestions are observed leading to curtailment even at low levels, less than 1GW, of installed renewables.

The study finds that preventive curtailment up to 5% could enable a significant increase in these levels, up to 3.5-3.8GW in 2030 and 5GW in 2040.

However, not all the system operators have the tools or the legal basis for such curtailment and these should be a priority for regulation and TSOs, the study recommends.

Notably the study found that the electrolyser deployment level has little to no impact in the hosting capacity of the Latvian grid. These are relatively large and concentrated loads, not necessarily located close to renewables and thus limit their impact in reducing grid congestion.

Other recommendations are to improve the transmission planning processes with the integration of grid enhancing technologies and to start preparing the ground for curative redispatch and other GETs including the technical requirements, the management of flexibilities and skills building.