The Baltics run their own frequency reserves for the first time. Flexible capacity is short, grid access is scarce, and the assets that exist today set the price.
Since desynchronisation, the Baltic states procure their own frequency reserves. Reserve products that previously came from Russia must now be sourced locally, and batteries are the fastest asset class able to deliver them.
Wind and solar are being built far faster than the storage and flexible capacity needed to firm them. The result is widening price spreads intraday and increasing curtailment risk for generators.
Connection capacity near substations is finite and slow to release. Sites with secured capacity are becoming the scarce asset — which is why we buy land and connection rights before we build.
Batteries earn from frequency containment, automatic and manual reserves, and energy arbitrage at once. Multiple revenue lines reduce dependence on any single market.
HOW THIS MARKET WORKS
Electricity can't be stored on the wire — it is used the instant it's made. So the grid must match supply and demand every second, and it reports that balance through one number: frequency.
THE BALANCE
THE GRID'S PULSE — FREQUENCY
Too much supply pushes frequency up; too little pulls it down. Drift too far and the grid trips into blackout — so the gap must be closed every second.
HOW THIS MARKET WORKS
A battery (BESS) charges when power is cheap or abundant and discharges when it is scarce or expensive. It earns two ways — and its real product is speed, not stored energy.
WHAT A BATTERY DOES
The value isn't the stored energy — it's the timing and the speed. A battery can swing from charging to discharging in milliseconds, exactly when the grid needs it.
THE CASE FOR STORAGE
The two ways a battery earns — arbitrage and balancing — open into four market products below; balancing splits into capacity and energy. Co-optimised in software, the mix is the difference between a low-teens and a low-twenties return.
Availability fees (€/MW/h) for standing ready to balance the grid — FCR (~30s), aFRR (seconds), mFRR (~12 min). Paid whether or not called. The premium stream in a young market — and the first to saturate.
Paid per MWh actually delivered on activation (via MARI / PICASSO). In the thin Baltic market these spikes have hit ±€10,000/MWh — holding back state-of-charge for them is a core operating skill.
Charge low, discharge high across day-ahead and intraday spreads — now on a 15-minute settlement that rewards fast assets. This is where revenue migrates as ancillary saturates.
Where a capacity market or contracted floor exists, a fee for firm available capacity (€/MW) — increasingly structural under the EU's 2024 market reform, and the route to bankable, financeable revenue. Not available in Latvia today — excluded from our underwriting.
THE OPPORTUNITY
Since leaving the Russian grid in February 2025, the Baltics must balance their own frequency on the Continental European system. Power crosses the interconnectors; frequency-balancing does not — so the ~1.5 GW need is met locally, yet only ~0.4 GW of battery storage serves it today.
THE OPPORTUNITY
Estimated 2h BESS revenue by market, H1 2026 average (€k/MW/yr)
Source: Clean Horizon Storage Index (2-hour BESS), H1 2026 (Jan–Jun) monthly average. Denmark = DK2. Figures vary month to month.