Ukraine is entering winter with a vulnerable electricity grid
As the winter chill sets in across Ukraine, concerns are growing that Russia will soon resume large-scale attacks on the power grid, repeating a tactic it used last year to break the will of Ukrainians by leaving them in the cold and darkness to deposit.
These fears are compounded by what Ukrainian experts and current and former officials say: an energy system that is more fragile than it was a year ago. In interviews, they described power plants still reeling from Russian attacks last winter, unfinished substation repairs and shortages of critical equipment such as transformers.
Ukrainian authorities refused to provide detailed data on the current state of the electricity grid, saying it was wartime sensitive information. But experts say the situation has improved only marginally since a United Nations Report An estimate published this summer estimated that Ukraine’s total production capacity had fallen to half of pre-war levels by the end of April.
“Not much has changed since then,” Victoria Voytsitska, a former lawmaker and senior member of the Ukrainian parliament’s energy committee, said in an interview. “We are in a much worse situation than last year.”
The situation looks particularly grim for thermal power plants, which are fueled by coal or gas and are a key element in Ukraine’s energy mix to meet demand during periods of peak consumption, experts say.
That’s what the Ukrainian government says According to the United Nations, the plants will supply 4.5 gigawatts of power this winter, a third of the country’s pre-war production. That’s the same capacity the organization estimated this summer, suggesting little progress has been made on repair work since then.
It’s fair to say that Ukraine has significantly increased its ability to shoot down Russian missiles and drones before they get anywhere near the power grid. The country now has powerful air defense systems and Ukrainian officials say fortifications have been built around critical energy facilities.
“On the one hand, we are more vulnerable,” said German Galushchenko, Ukraine’s energy minister. “On the other hand, we are better prepared.”
But some experts and lawmakers say the fortifications have not yet been tested, noting that in the event of successful attacks, the country’s energy system will have little backup in terms of supplies and equipment, making it more likely to collapse.
While Moscow has yet to resume large-scale missile attacks, Ukrainian officials have noted a recent increase in drone attacks on the power grid. An attack took place in the southern region of Odessa on Saturday About 2,000 families were without electricity for hours.
Memories of Russia’s air campaign against the power grid last winter still haunt Ukraine.
Moscow launched more than 1,200 missiles and drones against energy facilities between October 2022 and April 2023. according to Ukrenergo, the national electricity operator of Ukraine. By mid-November, nearly half of the country’s power grid was down, leaving people in cold and darkness.
Residents of Kiev, the capital, were sometimes forced to rely on flashlights at night and made plans for a possible evacuation of the city.
“A lot has been destroyed,” Mr. Galushchenko said in a recent interview at his ministry in Kiev. He was sitting in a conference room where two large posters showed pictures of downed power lines and burned-out transformers as big as houses.
Ukraine managed to survive the attacks thanks to air defense systems from Western allies that allowed it to intercept more Russian missiles, the round-the-clock work of engineers to repair vital equipment and the energy-saving ingenuity of its residents.
But the attacks left a scar on the power grid, at the Kiev School of Economics total damage is estimated at $8.8 billion from June this year.
Mr. Galushchenko said authorities had invested more than 10 billion Ukrainian hryvnias, or about $280 million, to repair what they could before another winter arrives. But like other officials, he recognized that a rapid return to pre-war levels was unattainable.
“It is impossible to fully restore energy facilities built over decades in less than a year,” said Alexei Kucherenko, deputy chairman of Parliament’s energy committee.
Volodymyr Kudritskyi, the head of Ukrenergo, said the country has rehabilitated the “low-hanging fruit” – the facilities that suffered the least damage – but several energy units have only been partially repaired.
A major challenge is finding transformers, which carry electricity from power stations to people’s homes, he said. According to the United Nations, Russia damaged or destroyed almost half of Ukraine’s high-voltage transformers last winter.
Ukrenergo has searched all over the world for transformers. But they could take up to a year to produce, meaning only a limited number have likely been delivered so far.
Mr Kudritskyi declined to say how many new transformers his company had received. But he acknowledged in an interview last week that “the safety margin, or safety buffer, is smaller this year when we talk about equipment that is in operation.”
According to Inna Sovsun, member of parliament’s energy committee, the transformers are so important that some of them are stored outside Ukraine’s borders, in allied countries, to avoid being attacked by Russia before winter.
Another challenge facing the Ukrainian power grid is the condition of thermal power plants. While most of the country’s electricity is produced by nuclear power, thermal power plants provide the additional generation capacity needed to meet peak demand.
According to the United Nations, all thermal power plants in Ukraine were damaged by Russian attacks last year. Repair work has lagged, several experts said in interviews, partly because Ukraine has struggled to find investors willing to finance factories that are highly polluting.
Roman Nitsovych, research director at DiXi Group, a Ukrainian think tank focused on the energy sector, said he estimated the repair work had restored a fifth of the power plants’ capacity lost to damage or Russian occupation.
Figures from the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy indicate a slightly more critical situation. Although the ministry says it has exceeded its repair targets, only 1.3 gigawatts of capacity has been restored for thermal power plants, about 15 percent of the total loss.
Ukraine’s production capacity appears so limited that some analysts wonder whether the country will be able to avoid power outages this winter even if Russia does not attack.
Viktor Kurtiev, the head of Metropoliya, an energy consultancy, estimated that during the peak winter period, Ukraine could face a shortage of 1.5 gigawatts, the amount needed to supply 10,000 households with electricity for a month, “without billing to deal with new Russian strikes. .”
“If the electricity grid is hit again, these shortages will worsen, so it is unlikely we will be able to avoid rolling blackouts this winter,” Mr Kurtiev said.
Mr Galushchenko, the Energy Minister, and Mr Kudrytskyi of Ukrenergo said they were confident that the vulnerability of the power grid would be compensated by the new defenses protecting it. Ukraine is now using Western-supplied Patriot surface-to-air missiles that it did not have at the start of last winter and which have proven effective in protecting Kiev’s airspace.
“The best solution for us is air defense,” Mr. Galushchenko said. He added that mobile brigades were now operating near crucial energy facilities to shoot down drones.
Ukraine has also built strongholds around facilities to protect them from direct hits or debris from missiles and drones. Ms Sovsun, the lawmaker, described it as a multi-layered system that includes sandbags, concrete walls and cages filled with stones.
The extent to which these fortifications will prove effective in protecting against attack remains to be seen, and it is unknown how many facilities across the country will benefit.
“We’ll see how it works,” Galushchenko said with a smile.
Daria Mitiuk contributed reporting from Kiev.