Lithuania more than doubled wind and solar in two years. The average price didn’t fall. The value of a solar MWh did.
ENTSO-E generation, capacity and day-ahead prices for the LT bidding zone, January 2024 to 15 September 2026, with a 2030 scenario model built on Litgrid’s connection pipeline.
- Wind capacity rose 95% and solar 159% between January 2024 and January 2026. Wind and solar now produce 73% of domestic generation, up from 62%.
- The average day-ahead price did not fall: €98.1/MWh so far in 2026 against €87.2 in the same period of 2024. Fuel and import prices lifted the whole price curve more than new capacity pushed it down.
- What solar earns did fall. Its capture rate dropped from 75% of the baseload price to 55%, and each extra GW of solar lowers the price by about €76/MWh in the same month and hour.
- In the base 2030 scenario the model puts wind and solar at 106% of demand, with solar earning 60% of the baseload price.
The fleet grew fast; output followed
Installed capacity, start of year
GW, ENTSO-E. Storage first reported in 2026.
Wind and solar share of domestic generation
Rolling 12 months. Excludes imports, so this is not share of consumption.
Monthly generation mix and day-ahead price
Average MW per month (bars) and monthly average price (line, right axis).
Wind output Jan–mid-Sep grew 20% in 2025 and 44% in 2026; solar grew 21% and 41%. Gas doubled in H1 2025, when local units ran for system security around the February 2025 synchronisation with continental Europe, then fell back.
Renewables push prices down hour by hour, but not on average
Merit-order effect
Median hourly price in 250 MW bins of combined wind and solar output. Bins with fewer than 40 hours are hidden.
Within the same month and hour, each extra GW of wind or solar lowers the price by roughly €50–87/MWh. The 2026 curve sits higher at every output level: fuel and import prices moved the whole curve up more than new capacity pushed it down.
What wind and solar actually earned
Generation-weighted price vs baseload average, 1 Jan – 15 Sep each year.
Solar earned 75% of the baseload price in 2024 and 55% in 2026: classic cannibalisation. Wind held up and even improved in 2026 because the windy months were also the expensive winter months. Hours below €5 fell in 2026 despite more solar, consistent with new batteries, Kruonis pumping and price-responsive curtailment absorbing midday surplus.
Average price by hour of day
Lines: price by year. Bars: average 2026 solar output (right axis).
Regression: price effect per GW
Hourly prices with year-month × hour fixed effects, which absorb fuel price level and daily shape.
| Period | €/MWh per GW wind | per GW solar | within R² |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | -87.2 | -80.1 | 0.16 |
| 2025 | -81.7 | -80.2 | 0.21 |
| 2026 | -51.3 | -70.4 | 0.17 |
| All years | -70.4 | -75.6 | 0.17 |
The solar effect is steady at about −€70 to −80/MWh per GW. The wind effect weakened in 2026, to −€51 from −€87 in 2024.
Cheap sunny middays, expensive winters
Price heatmap: month × hour
Daily price with anomaly detection
Daily average price against a baseline (31-day rolling median adjusted for wind and solar output). Diamonds mark days where the residual exceeds 4 robust standard deviations; triangles mark system events.
| Date | Price | Expected | Wind + solar MW | Gas MW | z | What the data shows |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-01-05 | €667 | €131 | 185 | 816 | 20.0 | Near-windless day, gas dispatched hard; scarcity priced from imports |
| 2026-02-03 | €385 | €171 | 767 | 579 | 8.0 | Low renewables with heavy gas use |
| 2025-03-31 | €312 | €102 | 372 | 253 | 7.8 | Near-windless day, gas dispatched hard; scarcity priced from imports |
| 2025-10-07 | €291 | €132 | 231 | 400 | 5.9 | Near-windless day, gas dispatched hard; scarcity priced from imports |
| 2024-12-12 | €235 | €88 | 662 | 530 | 5.5 | Low renewables with heavy gas use |
| 2026-02-02 | €314 | €176 | 721 | 522 | 5.2 | Low renewables with heavy gas use |
| 2024-10-02 | €241 | €115 | 126 | 188 | 4.7 | Near-windless day, gas dispatched hard; scarcity priced from imports |
| 2025-11-25 | €269 | €144 | 118 | 304 | 4.7 | Near-windless day, gas dispatched hard; scarcity priced from imports |
| 2025-04-01 | €187 | €75 | 684 | 62 | 4.1 | Price well above what domestic supply explains; likely interconnector or regional scarcity |
More capacity, lower prices, and a growing surplus to place
Additions to the start-of-2026 fleet (wind 2.51 GW, solar 3.02 GW, storage 0.43 GW) from Litgrid’s transmission connection pipeline. Pick a build-out scenario:
Fixed assumptions: demand 15 TWh (2025 ≈ 12.6), +1 GW distributed solar, fuel and import prices at Sep 2025–Sep 2026 levels, 1.2 GW export capacity in surplus hours, wind capacity factor 25%, solar 10%.
Capacity path to 2030
Actual 2024–2026, then a linear build to the scenario (faded). Line: average demand.
Price duration curve
All 8,760 hours sorted from most to least expensive.
A week in 2030
Hourly supply against demand, using that week’s actual weather scaled to the 2030 fleet. Storage charging shows below zero.
Capacity path to 2030
Actual 2024–2026, then a linear build to the scenario (faded). Line: average demand.
Price duration curve
All 8,760 hours sorted from most to least expensive.
A week in 2030
Hourly supply against demand, using that week’s actual weather scaled to the 2030 fleet. Storage charging shows below zero.
Capacity path to 2030
Actual 2024–2026, then a linear build to the scenario (faded). Line: average demand.
Price duration curve
All 8,760 hours sorted from most to least expensive.
A week in 2030
Hourly supply against demand, using that week’s actual weather scaled to the 2030 fleet. Storage charging shows below zero.
Capacity path to 2030
Actual 2024–2026, then a linear build to the scenario (faded). Line: average demand.
Price duration curve
All 8,760 hours sorted from most to least expensive.
A week in 2030
Hourly supply against demand, using that week’s actual weather scaled to the 2030 fleet. Storage charging shows below zero.
How the 2030 model works, and where it breaks
- Weather year is 16 Sep 2025 – 15 Sep 2026. Hourly wind and solar shapes are rescaled to 2030 capacity and the chosen capacity factors. One weather year cannot show year-to-year variation.
- No hourly load was supplied. Demand uses a stylised seasonal and daily profile scaled to the annual TWh; ENTSO-E actual load for LT would replace it.
- Prices come from an empirical curve fitted on the weather year: price = monthly scarcity price × 1.25·e−0.95·coverage, where coverage is domestic renewable and must-run supply divided by demand. In-sample it reproduces a €92.5 base vs €97.4 actual and a solar capture price of €60.8 vs €56.3 actual, so it is somewhat optimistic for solar.
- Beyond coverage of about 1.9 the curve is extrapolation. It assumes neighbours absorb surpluses as they do today; if Latvia, Estonia, Poland and SE4 add solar at the same pace, midday prices will be lower than shown.
- Storage runs one cycle per day at 88% round-trip efficiency, charging in the cheapest and discharging in the most expensive hours. It does not model balancing-market revenue, which currently drives most Baltic battery dispatch.
- ENTSO-E aggregated data undercounts wind and solar by roughly 10% against Litgrid totals, so historical outputs were scaled by 1.1 for calibration. Pipeline projects commissioned during 2026 may already be counted in the 2026 baseline.
Sources: ENTSO-E Transparency Platform (LT generation per type, installed capacity, day-ahead prices); Litgrid connection pipeline statement. Prices in EUR/MWh; 15-minute data from October 2025 averaged to hourly.