Ukraine sees new virtue in wind energy: it is harder to destroy

ODESA, Ukraine — The giants catch the wind with their huge arms and help keep the lights on in Ukraine — newly built windmills on plains along the Black Sea.

In 15 months of war, Russia has launched countless missiles and exploding drones at power plants, hydroelectric plants and substations, trying to black out as much of Ukraine as it can, as often as it can, in its campaign to bring the country into submission. . The new Tyligulska wind farm is only a few tens of kilometers from Russian artillery, but Ukrainians say it has a crucial advantage over most of the country’s power grid.

A single, well-placed missile can damage a power plant badly enough to knock it out of action, but Ukrainian officials say doing the same with a bunch of windmills, each hundreds of feet apart, would require dozens of missiles. . A wind farm can be temporarily disabled by hitting a substation or transmission lines, but these are much easier to repair than power plants.

“It is our answer to the Russians,” said Maksym Timchenko, the CEO of DTEK Group, the company that built the turbines in the southern Mykolaiv region, the first phase of what is slated to be Eastern Europe’s largest wind farm. “It is the most profitable and, as we now know, the safest form of energy.”

Ukraine has had laws in place since 2014 to promote the transition to renewable energy, both to reduce dependence on Russian energy imports and because it was profitable. But that transition has a long way to go, and the war is clouding the outlook – like everything else about Ukraine’s future.

In 2020, 12 percent of electricity in Ukraine came from renewable sources, barely half the percentage for the European Union. Plans for the Tyligulska project call for 85 turbines producing up to 500 megawatts of electricity, enough for 500,000 apartments — an impressive output for a wind farm, but less than 1 percent of the country’s pre-war generation capacity.

After the Kremlin began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the need for new energy sources became acute. Russia has bombed Ukraine’s power stations and cut off supplies of the natural gas that fueled some of them.

Russian occupation forces have seized much of the country’s power supply, to ensure that output does not reach the territory still held by Ukraine. They contain the largest generator, the 5,700-megawatt Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which has been repeatedly damaged in combat and has stopped sending energy to the grid. They also control 90 percent of Ukraine’s renewable power plants, which are concentrated in the southeast.

The post-war recovery plans that Ukraine has presented to the European Union – which it hopes to join – and other supporters include a major new commitment to clean energy.

“The war has accelerated us,” said Hanna Zamazeeva, the head of the Ukrainian government agency for energy efficiencywho supported the construction of the wind farm.

But energy and economic analysts say much of the hoped-for green transition will have to wait for reconstruction to begin and foreign investment to return, and may depend on Ukraine’s success on the battlefield.

“The development of renewable energies, especially wind and solar energy, depends on the successful reconquest of these territories by Ukraine,” now owned by Russia, the Center for Strategic and International Studies reported in December. “The level of destruction in these regions can hamper any new investment or development, as infrastructure such as roads and grid networks may need to be rebuilt. Existing installations may also have been damaged.”

The potential for wind energy in southern Ukraine became apparent this month at the project’s opening ceremony, when hot, dry air streamed through a wheat field lined with massive turbines. Amid snacks-covered tables, their linens flapping in the wind, the assembled diplomats and journalists had to turn their backs on the billowing dust.

The three-bladed turbines at Tyligulska, made by the Danish company Vestas, are huge circles in the sky with a diameter of more than 150 meters. Each windmill weighs about 800 tons.

The first turbine was built in February 2022, the month the invasion began, and then DTEK froze construction. But in August, Evheniy Moroz, the company’s site manager, received a call from his director asking if they could resume work without international contractors, who had all evacuated and taken their heavy equipment.

“I started calling the guys I worked with to find out where they are, which contractors are still working and if there are any cranes in Ukraine that can lift 100 tons,” said Mr. Moroz.

He only found one and it needed to be renovated, but this crane was his only hope. The builders modified the crane for the job and called it their “little dragon.” Construction has resumed.

Builders were working in open fields about 60 miles from the front lines, hiding in a bunker when air raid sirens sounded. Rockets fired from Russian ships in the Black Sea roared overhead, but did not target the location. Cruise missiles flew lower than the turbines and attempted to evade radar detection by Ukrainian air defenses.

They are a modest step towards energy security and a green transition, but the new wind turbines mean something more direct for Ukraine, said Vitaliy Kim, the governor of the Mykolaiv region.

“The construction of this wind power plant is a kind of signal that it is possible to build during the war,” he said. “Such projects must exist for the independence of our country.”