In the first days of the current week, Kyiv residents felt what it was like to return to emergency power outages. Electricity in the capital was turned off more often than in the last days of 2022 and the first week of 2023. Director General of YASNO Serhiy Kovalenko explained what was happening:
“Actually, everything is happening as we said: the temperature on the street is decreasing, consumption is increasing and the number of accidents is increasing. In Kyiv, there were emergency restrictions and slightly exceeded the schedule in some areas.”
He calls to realize that “neither generation nor networks are currently in a condition to work without restrictions. And now is the time when we have a significant generation deficit for the country.”
According to the top manager, each area now receives significant restrictions, everyone is saving. The schedules were tougher in many places last weekend as well.
“Many questions: how did it happen that there was light on New Year’s Day, and now there is a blackout again? The fact that we didn’t have blackouts on New Year’s Day is the result of the efforts of the power engineers, who literally kept the temporary circuits in working order,” explained Kovalenko.
He said that a number of production facilities across the country were turned off in recent days, which means that more electricity went to the population. Therefore, nowadays it is necessary to maintain a balance between the population and business, because without the work of the latter, the economy will stop.
In the first days of January, Kyiv had real spring weather — +11 degrees Celsius. In recent days — 11, — 7.
Kovalenko reminded that: “every -5° is +200 MW, so today we need more MW for Kyiv. And you never know which megawatt will lead to emergency shutdowns.”
It is also important to take into account that even during the holidays, capacity repairs continued. For example, one unit at the Rivne NPP is currently undergoing major repairs. And what’s worse, accidents are added to them.
Now, in the post-holiday period, Ukrainians must return to the regime of strict electricity savings.
In Kyiv, they began to turn off the electricity due to the cold weather. In the morning, approximately 200,000 households were disconnected from electricity. He told about it first deputy of the KMDA Mykola Povoroznyk on the air TV channel “Kyiv”. According to him, during the last days, electricity was not turned off in the capital due to the fact that there was a “plus” temperature in the city. In addition, there were non-working days and many Kyivans left the city.
