Rolling blackouts to become routine for Ukrainians, says The Economist

Power outages will become a common occurrence for Ukrainians due to extensive damage to its energy infrastructure and a shortage of both funds and time for repairs.

Source: The Economist

Quote: "There is too little time and too few of the billions of dollars needed to install several hundred small power plants, renovate bombed-out power stations or build wind and solar farms. Rolling blackouts will be routine."

Details: The Economist notes that Ukrainians have already adapted to the electricity shortage. Small businesses have diesel generators, medium-sized plants have invested in gas turbines, and they may even sell surplus electricity to the national grid. Cafés have opened up to provide co-working spaces. All buildings have generators to power the lifts. People are buying rechargeable batteries for Wi-Fi and USB lamps.

Meanwhile, DTEK CEO Maksym Timchenko stated that this year, 90% of their generating capacity has been destroyed. Waves of attacks, starting in March, targeted thermal and hydroelectric power plants and, for the first time, solar power plants [DTEK Group is the largest private energy company in Ukraine – ed.].

Before the full-scale invasion, Ukraine's generating capacity was 36 gigawatts (GW) of electricity. Russia targeted the energy infrastructure at the end of 2022, and half of this capacity has already been lost – either occupied, destroyed or damaged. Ukraine has managed to restore some capacity, and last winter, it almost managed to maintain electricity supply, restoring capacity to almost the required 18 GW at that time.

However, this year's attacks destroyed 9 GW of capacity. Almost all the remaining generation comes from nuclear power plants that the Russians have refrained from attacking. In the streets of Kyiv, the hum of generators has returned, and power disruptions are occurring in every Ukrainian city. Russian attacks continue, and there is a shortage of anti-aircraft batteries to shoot down all the missiles.

The Economist notes that there is some hope in the short term that damaged power plants may be sufficiently repaired by this winter to generate an additional 2-3 GW of capacity. Ukrainian engineers are looking in Europe for used equipment from decommissioned Soviet-type power plants. However, the feasibility of this remains unclear.

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