The Public Utilities Commission has approved the electricity transmission tariff of the Latvian transmission operator JSC "Augstsprieguma tīkls" (AST), which comes into effect on July 1.

It has already been reported that the rapid rise in energy resource prices and inflation affected the cost of electricity transmission services. AST's losses from electricity transmission in 2022 reached 32 million euros, which, in order to reduce the burden on consumers, were covered by using congestion fee revenues - fees that transmission system operators receive when there is a price difference between electricity trading areas.

AST has managed to find solutions so that, in addition to the previously implemented cost reduction measures, the costs included in AST's tariffs are reduced by 58.1 million EUR, where 25.6 million EUR reduction was achieved due to the fall in electricity prices and their forecasts; 21 million EUR reduction is due to the permission to use congestion fee revenues to cover losses; 5.8 million EUR savings by purchasing capacity reserves and 5.7 million EUR reduction from other solutions, which was influenced by the current inflation forecasts of the Bank of Latvia and the extension of the regulatory period until December 31, 2025. The increase in transmission tariffs has been reduced from 111% to 30% in the approved tariff project.

It is important that even after July 1, the transmission tariff remains competitive at the Baltic level and is on average 25% lower than the tariff of the Estonian transmission system and 27% lower than the tariff of the Lithuanian transmission system.