Electricity-producing households can already supply 10% of total consumption in Latvia

The number of microgenerator households in the Baltic nation has reached 10,000

Electricity production on a small scale is gaining popularity in Latvia, as announced by AS “Sadales tīkls" (ST), the national company in charge of maintaining the power infrastructure of the country. The power distribution operator stated that the number of Latvian households producing their own energy has already reached 10,000. 

More specifically, this means that taken together these small producers, known as microgenerators, have a combined capacity of 80 MW. On a sunny summer day, they could meet 10% of the total electricity demand in Latvia.

Solar panels are the preferred technology for microgeneration

According to "Sadales tīkls" representatives, the year 2022 has become a turning point in the development of renewable energy resources in Latvia, especially considering the pace of development of microgeneration.

At the end of 2021, about 2,000 microgenerators were connected to ST - currently, there are five times more. Accordingly, this year, in less than 10 months, the total number of microgenerators has increased by 8,000.

"Among the Baltic states, we have been the leaders in renewable energy development for many years, but already in the first half of this year, we surpassed Estonia in terms of the development of microgeneration and we are continuing this rapid rise. In fact, we have run the marathon in sprint distance. The keywords for this achievement are cooperation and digitalized processes,” stated Sandis Jansons, Chairman of " Sadales tīkls", as quoted by LSM.

99% of the Latvian microgenerators connected to the power distribution network are using solar panels. In terms of geographical distribution, Riga and its suburban municipalities are leading the pack, with the capital city, the Mārupe and Ropaži municipalities containing almost a quarter of the microgenerators in the country.

The energy distributor also pointed out that the interest in the development of micro power plants in Latvia continues to grow month after month. In August of this year, ST received a record number of power plant connection applications – 214, but this record was broken already in September with 274 applications.

Currently, ST has reserved around 1,100 MW of generation capacity for future power stations, and already in the summer of 2023, the total production capacity of microgenerators could reach 200 MW. That would significantly increase the share of solar generation in the Baltic country's energy resources portfolio.