Ukrenergo predicts minor electricity restrictions in winter

This was announced by the acting Chairman of the Board of NPC Ukrenergo Oleksii Brekht at a retreat of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Energy, Housing and Utilities on September 30, Ukrinform reports.

He noted that Ukrenergo has prepared an updated forecast balance for the autumn-winter period. “This document stipulates that in three months – December, January and February – we can expect some minor restrictions on electricity consumption,” Brekht said.

According to him, the need to limit consumption may arise in the morning and evening hours on weekdays.

“If the temperature is above freezing or above zero, we will go through this period without any restrictions. If the temperature is minus 10-15 degrees, restrictions are possible. But they should not reach more than 1-1.5 GW, which is proportional to one stage in the outage schedules,” said Brecht.

The CEO of Ukrenergo emphasized that the company is working on mechanisms to compensate for the deficit in the power system, and one of these mechanisms is imports. According to Brekht, the company is currently considering a potential increase in the capacity of the cross-border connection by 300 MW, up to 2 GW.

The second mechanism to overcome the deficit is emergency assistance. The restoration and construction of new generation is also being considered.

“According to preliminary estimates, the actual facilities that can be commissioned or repaired this year are about 500 MW of capacity. Half of them are distributed generation facilities,” Brecht said.

Another 250 MW of capacity can be provided to the power system by the construction of floating power plants.

As reported, the European Commission will additionally allocate about 160 million euros to help Ukraine’s energy system in the face of Russian attacks.