There are attacks on critical infrastructure in Ukraine

Sergey Kondratiev, Principal Director on Economic Studies at the Institute for Energy and Finance, gave a comment to Business FM about operating the Ukrainian energy system.

The Russian Armed Forces have destroyed the Tripolskaya thermal power plant, and this threatens to cause widespread power outages in the north-east of Ukraine.

"This is actually one of the largest thermal power plants in Ukraine, which could run on both coal and natural gas. If we are talking about its capacity, the nominal capacity is 1.8 GW, six power units of 300 MW each. Of course, its capacities have not been fully used in recent years. Like many other thermal power plants in Ukraine, it operated in the mode of regulating intra-day and seasonal fluctuations in electricity demand. But if we are talking about the situation in 2024, this is a very important power plant, because Ukraine has already faced the loss of the Zmievskaya TPP in the Kharkiv region, the Ladyzhinskaya TPP in the Vinnytsia region, as well as the Pridneprovskaya TPP in the Dnipropetrovsk region was damaged. And there are practically no capacities left that could provide electricity generation in thermal generation. And this is a very serious challenge for the Ukrainian energy system, because in fact only nuclear power plants can operate, but they operate in the base load mode, that is, they cannot significantly change the supply of electricity during the day, even within 3-5%.

And this means that Ukrenergo will have to introduce rolling blackouts, and especially severe ones in the northeastern regions of the country — in the Kharkiv region, in the Kiev region, in the Sumy region, because a request for emergency assistance to European countries will not help here. That is, Hungary, Poland, Romania provide such assistance at the request of Ukrenergo, but due to restrictions on transmission to the center and east from western power grids, in fact, such an option of significantly increasing the inflow from Eastern Europe will not play a role here."