Ukraine suspends electricity exports, works to restore power after Russia hits energy infrastructure

LONDON (ICIS)–The Ukrainian electricity grid operator Ukrenergo was working to restore electricity across the country after Russia launched a heavy rocket attack against Ukraine’s main cities, knocking out more than 1GW of capacity and plunging the country in the dark on Monday.

A source close to the operator said the government decided to suspend exports to neighbouring countries starting Tuesday morning and added that in an extreme scenario Ukraine would be looking to import power.

Despite the widespread damage caused by 50 rockets deliberately targeting the energy infrastructure on Monday morning, Ukraine does not expect to source any electricity from abroad for the time being, the source said.

Ukraine’s import capacity is close to 2GW but in a worst case scenario, Ukraine may need around 300MW in peak hours later in January, according to the source.

“The infrastructure was attacked but the good news is that no Ukrenergo employees were killed. Substations, power lines and generation companies can be restored but human lives can’t,” the source said.

Throughout the day, engineers and technicians were working to restore power to the western Lviv, Khmelytskyi in western Ukraine and the Zhytomyr and Sumy regions in the northwest and northeastern parts of the country.

To carry out repairs in these regions and rebalance the system, Ukrenergo introduced rotating blackouts, asking consumers to reduce consumption, which would be generated by around 460MW of capacity. The rotating blackouts were introduced between 15-23 hours in the Kyiv region and central Ukraine.

The source said the blackouts and the suspension of exports were temporary. The government warned earlier in September that commercial flows to neighbouring countries, including to Moldova, may be stopped in case of attacks.

A regional source said Moldova, which relies for around a quarter of its electricity consumption on Ukrainian imports, was expecting to flow volumes from Romania via the southern lines from Tuesday.

Russia mounted its biggest airstrike against Ukraine since the start of the war in February following an attack on a bridge linking the illegally annexed Crimean peninsula to its territory. Part of the bridge collapsed on Saturday morning.