Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania disconnected from Russian power grid
By 9:09 a.m. on Saturday, the electricity systems of all three Baltic states had successfully disconnected from the Russian-controlled IPS/UPS system, and are now operating independently in island mode before synchronizing with the Continental European grid on Sunday.
BTW: The photo with the arc in the article is misleading, what you see there is a disconnector/isolator switch, it's not used to switch loads, it's just there to visibly disconnect circuits. The actual switches used switch loads look like T-shaped ceramic insulators. If you'd use a disconnector to switch loads you'd get huge arcs that could damage it (there are photos of that happening when the actual switch failed). The tiny arc you see in the photo is either from residual currents or electrostatic discharge.
I suppose anyone who is familiar with the subject would not think that the synchronous power plant of 3 countries is shut down by a single circuit breaker, so the image is symbolic.
Makes sense that they won't switch it off while connected to the rest of the grid. But didn't they already did this some time ago and were supposed to sync with European grid?
The article is from a February 8.
