Two months of silence and no electricity: what prevents Ukraine from quickly restoring the power system
29 December 19:15
It will take Ukraine about two months to return to stable operation of the power system without power outages, provided that Russian strikes on the energy infrastructure are completely stopped.
This was stated by Acting Energy Minister Artem Nekrasov in an interview with Forbes Ukraine, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
“We have recently made calculations. If the strikes stopped now, it would take two months to restore the power system,” he said.
The scale of the destruction
According to Nekrasov, in just three autumn months, Russia damaged about 8,000 MW of generating capacity. As of December, about half of this volume had been restored.
However, power engineers are forced to work in conditions of continuous attacks.
“Russia is attacking not only power plants, but also power grids, substations and gas production infrastructure,” explains the acting minister.
According to him, as of December 26, nine massive attacks on the power grid have been recorded – on average every 10-15 days.
Systematic attacks on network infrastructure
Nekrasov calls systematic attacks on the network infrastructure a separate problem:
- more than 2000 attacks on power grids since the beginning of the campaign;
- about 440 attacks directly on energy facilities;
- an average of 60 transformers per month are damaged by shelling.
According to power engineers, the destruction of grids and substations often causes long and localized blackouts, even where generation is intact.
New strikes in late December
Against this backdrop, the attacks continue. On the night of December 27, a large-scale air alert was announced in Ukraine, with cruise missiles being spotted in the airspace.
As a result of this attack, almost a third of Kyiv was left without heat supply, according to Mayor Vitali Klitschko. A significant number of consumers were also cut off from electricity in the capital, the region and Chernihiv Oblast, partly due to the fighting.
What it means for the winter
The Ministry of Energy’s assessment shows that the Ukrainian power system is technically capable of recovering in a relatively short time. However, the key condition remains the cessation or at least a significant reduction in attacks.
At the same time, DTEK Odesa Power Grids CEO Dmytro Hryhoriev said that it would take 1-2 years to fully restore the affected substations in Odesa region.
According to Mr. Grigoriev, 48,000 customers in Odesa Oblast are still without power due to hostile attacks.
“It won’t take much time to connect these customers as we are at a certain stage of the work. However, it will take 1-2 years to fully restore the affected substations in Odesa region,” said Grigoriev.
He emphasized that the enemy systematically attacks the power system. Prior to the massive attack on the power grid on December 13, when 60% of the region was cut off, 20 substations had already been damaged.
“We need equipment to restore it. We have to use something that is not written in textbooks. If you draw the schematics involved, you can probably get a patent. In terms of equipment manufacturing time, transformers take the longest to make, 6-8 months. Therefore, there is a certain queue for this equipment,” explained DTEK CEO.
He added that there are forced emergency blackouts in Odesa to avoid overloading the damaged equipment.
Unfortunately, they cannot be predicted, divided among all addresses and scheduled. After all, power engineers are forced to turn off customers when they see grid overload and return light to homes when consumption drops. The higher the consumption, the longer the restrictions.
