Latvia Electricity Tariff API

How a household electricity price is built in Latvia

Latvia has been fully open since households left the last regulated retail prices at the end of 2014, and the network side of the market is close to a single-operator one: one distribution operator covers almost the entire country, alongside a handful of small licensed operators. Most of those are site-level closed networks an ordinary home never sits on — an airport, a port, a business park — but one of them, the state railway, also distributes to a residential neighbourhood of one eastern city under its own regulated tariff, which is materially dearer than the national one, so a Latvian address is not quite always served by the same company. The regulated grid tariff has no time-of-use dimension at all — a single flat rate applies at every hour — and there is no electricity tax, no renewables levy and no concession fee on a residential bill. The one new item is a balancing-capacity charge born of the Baltic states leaving the old Russian-era grid for the continental European one in 2025.

What a household bill is made of

1. 1

   Energy

   Traded day-ahead on Nord Pool in a single national bidding zone, at fifteen-minute market resolution. Dynamic products indexed to that price are a mainstream household product here, not a niche one, alongside static fixed-term contracts; a statutory universal-service product is available to any household that opts into it, as a fixed-price alternative to a freely chosen supplier.

2. 2

   Network charges

   A single regulated tariff for the one dominant distribution operator, in two parts and with no time-of-use split — the same rate applies at every hour of the day. A fixed charge is billed per ampere of connection capacity per month; a variable charge is billed per kWh. Household and business customers on the same connection type pay the same published tariff, and the transmission cost is already folded in, so a household never sees a separate transmission line.

3. 3

   Taxes and levies

   None of the country’s statutory levies reach a residential kWh: the electricity tax exempts households outright, and the renewables-support levy was set to zero and later struck from the law entirely. What has appeared instead is a balancing-capacity charge — a system-operator cost rather than a tax, introduced after the Baltic states left the old Russian-era synchronous grid for the continental European one, and reset monthly. The regulator leaves it to each supplier whether to show that charge as its own line or fold it into the energy price, so it is not always visible as a separate item. A household discount for a defined set of vulnerable categories exists as a state-funded rebate applied to the invoice, not as a price component.

4. 4

   VAT

   21%, the standard rate, with electricity on no reduced-rate list — the reduced rate covers thermal energy and wood fuel for households, not electricity — so there is no domestic/non-domestic split.

Regulation shaping the price

• The regulator approves both the distribution and transmission tariffs and licenses every network operator, but does not set retail energy prices itself.
• A statutory universal-service product — a fixed price for twelve months with no exit fee — must be offered by every licensed supplier, and a temporary last-resort supply run by the distribution operator covers any premises left without a valid contract until a real one is signed.
• Net metering, which banks exported energy in kilowatt-hours, closed to new installations in 2024 and is being phased out for its remaining participants by the end of the decade. The current scheme is net billing, which banks the exported value in euros and requires a contract with a supplier — without one, exported energy passes to the network operator at no charge.

Market structure last reviewed August 2026.