On 9 October, Eesti Energia started providing a manual Frequency Restoration Reserve to the MARI (Manually Activated Reserves Initiative) energy market platform. Through the system operator Elering, balancing bids will now be forwarded to the pan-European platform.

This is a significant step that will help to ensure the functioning of the Baltic electricity system after BRELL has been disconnected from the electricity network.

According to Armen Kasparov, Head of Energy Trading at Eesti Energia, switching to the MARI frequency control platform is a step closer to desynchronising BRELL from the electricity network. ‘As the first production asset, we activated Enefit Green’s wind farms on the MARI frequency control platform, which helped to maintain the balance of the electricity system through the new platform,’ Kasparov explained. ‘In addition to wind farms, we can also provide frequency control with dispatchable generation capacities and the Auvere battery storage device, which will be completed by the end of the year.’

The dispatchable energy blocks of Enefit Power started providing a manual Frequency Restoration Reserve to the MARI platform from 14 October, when electricity prices rose again due to low wind energy production and dispatchable plants entered the market. To date, Enefit Power has successfully qualified 75 MW of dispatchable up- and downregulation capacity for the mFRR market.

While from 2018 until now, the Baltic States collected balancing bids on a common Baltic platform with hourly settlement, then joining the MARI platform led to the transition to a 15-minute market time unit.

Eesti Energia has previously participated in the regulating capacity market of the Baltic and Finnish electricity systems with various production assets. Both Enefit Power’s power plants and Enefit Green’s wind farms are connected to Elering’s systems to provide fast-reacting energy reserves that support energy security and security of supply.

According to Kasparov, dispatchable power plants and battery solutions have an an important role i in the desynchronisation of the electricity network, as they can participate in the frequency control market independently of weather conditions. Enefit Power’s production capacities today account for approximately 85% of the dispatchable capacities in Estonia.

Estonia will disconnect from the Russian electricity system and join the continental European electricity system in February 2025. This will create a need for flexible and fast-reacting reserves that can be activated in real-time through digital solutions. The transition to a green energy system will also increase the demand for regulation reserves.

After joining the continental European frequency area, European-wide digital market platforms MARI and PICASSO will be used for frequency control, aimed at operating energy bids for the manual Frequency Restoration Reserve (mFRR) and automatic Frequency Restoration Reserve (aFRR), respectively.