Ukraine will build a power grid that is harder to destroy and easier to restore
8 June 16:47
ANALYSIS FROM 
In the early days of summer, Ukrainians were warned that the coming winter is unlikely to be any easier than the last one. On the other hand, there is still time to prepare for this winter—for the central government, the regions, local communities, and businesses alike. These four operational levels are defined in the new state concept for the resilience of energy infrastructure against Russian attacks, which was presented recently in Kyiv. "Komersant Ukrainian" investigated how this system will work.
“Energy Hives” is the name given to the distributed energy generation model being implemented by the Ukrainian government. It was presented to foreign partners at the “Security Architecture” International Forum in Kyiv by Ukraine’s First Deputy Prime Minister for Energy, Denys Shmyhal. According to him, the goal is not to restore the old system, but to build a new one.
“The old system was built on peacetime logic—centralization, scale, and economic optimization. In a stable environment, this model was effective, but in wartime, centralization became a risk, so our task is to build a system that is harder to destroy and easier to restore,” the official noted.
Distributed Resilience
Government plans for 2026 call for the launch of an additional 1.5 GW of distributed generation. And it is precisely these facilities that will form the “energy cells,” which are the main elements of the new resilience architecture of the Ukrainian power grid.
“This is a separate element that has a certain degree of autonomy but is part of a larger structure. Damage to a single cell does not destroy the entire system,” Denys Shmyhal explained at the forum.
Participants in the discussion agree on the need to develop distributed energy generation. But they acknowledge that accomplishing this task will be difficult. Vladimir Kudritsky, head of Ukrenergo from 2020 to 2024 and co-founder of the Ukrainian energy and technology company NEGEN, says:
“I have been consistently advocating for quite some time the need to establish distributed generation in Ukraine—that is, a large network of small-scale power plants. Locally, such power plants can be grouped into specific classes; they can be called ‘hives,’ or the currently popular term ‘energy islands,’ but they must not be isolated from the power grid; they simply must have the capacity to provide a specific area with primary power supply in the event of extreme situations. This is a technically very complex task. But the most important thing for Ukraine at this stage is, in fact, to deploy these power plants, this distributed generation.”
Olena Pavlenko, President of the DiXi Group think tank, calls the construction of such a distributed system “a good idea,” the implementation of which poses more than one challenge.
“If we add such generation at every level, it will require additional investment at all levels, starting with every family or every home—if we install solar panels or heat pumps on homes, or use other methods to become energy-independent. And there is another important challenge: creating conditions so that businesses invest in the development of such small independent systems and foreign investment flows in.”
Perhaps European investors will find this approach easier to understand. According to Olena Pavlenko, a similar principle is already in place in the European Union, where they refer to their global energy system as a “system of systems.”
Levels of Energy Resilience
The new model of a distributed energy system envisages four operational levels of resilience. The first level is the state, which is responsible for the stable operation of baseload generation, nuclear power, transmission grids, dispatch control, and synchronization with the European power grid. The second level consists of regions with their own specific characteristics and resilience plans. Next are communities, which must ensure a level of energy autonomy that guarantees the operation of local critical infrastructure facilities. And finally, the fourth level consists of businesses and consumers: private enterprises, homeowners’ associations, households, and so on. According to government officials, they should not merely be passive consumers but must become part of the energy system: “generating, storing, balancing, and feeding energy into the grid.”
Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, head of Ukrenergo from 2020 to 2024, emphasizes the importance of cooperation between businesses and communities.
“The rollout of Ukraine’s new generation capacity is, in fact, primarily a task for private companies. This is because state-owned companies will not be able to solve these problems quickly, particularly due to very complex, bureaucratic regulations. And private companies will only be able to do this in close cooperation with communities. Here is the formula for success in building this generation. It is desirable that the state intervene as little as possible in this process and send clear and understandable signals to investors that this decentralized generation is needed.”
In fact, the developers of the new concept do not seem to object to minimizing state intervention. At least, in matters that can be effectively resolved at the local or grassroots levels
“The state should not centrally decide on matters that a community can handle, and the community should not interfere where business can act more quickly,” is how Denys Shmyhal explained this position.
However, such a delegation of tasks related to the development of distributed generation from the state to the regional, local, and business levels may raise questions: “Isn’t this just a way to avoid responsibility?” Especially with the upcoming winter, which may be no less challenging than the previous one. And in a context where funds are often insufficient to implement resilience plans. The perspective of Olena Pavlenko, president of the DiXi Group think tank.
“Responsibility is when you understand that you can fulfill the commitments you have undertaken, including… But in a situation where Russia has destroyed our thermal power plants and continues to attack energy facilities, it is very difficult to guarantee that electricity will be supplied to everyone consistently—and that it will be cheap. Therefore, developing new generation capacity is a financial challenge for many, but it is also an honest answer for people who want to have electricity. Instead of simply relying on empty promises, it’s better to establish a proper system of support, regulation, and perhaps certain incentives, and try to build such a system together. And the government’s task is to create the conditions for this.”
Conditions are important. But what good are they without criteria for evaluating effectiveness? As reported, one such criterion will be “time-to-recovery,” as defined by the government—that is, the time required to fully restore a facility’s operational capacity following a missile or drone strike. To speed up the repair process, strategic reserves of new transformers, high-voltage equipment, and specialized machinery are being formed and pre-positioned in safe locations across the country.
