Kyiv may soon return to predictable power outages, minister says
Kyiv in blackout (Photo: REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko)
About 710,000 consumers in Kyiv remain without power, with repair crews working around the clock to allow the city to return to scheduled rolling blackouts, Ukrainian Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Jan. 27.
“The energy system was damaged unevenly, so during the first weeks [scheduled blackouts], schedules may vary among different distribution areas [of the city],” Shmyhal said in a Telegram post. “That will depend local transmission network bottlenecks.”
He said the government has provided all possible support to the capital. Additionally, authorities are developing long-term solutions, including adding more modular power plants, simplifying grid connections, and building new power lines. Officials are completing a verification of existing cogeneration units in Kyiv.
“Our priority is stable operation and maximum power injection into the grid,” he said, “which will help meet consumer needs and strengthen the capital’s energy resilience.”
On NV Radio earlier the same day, Maksym Bakhmatov, head of Kyiv’s Desnianskyi district administration, described severe heating shortfalls in the Troieshchyna neighborhood, on the left bank of the Dnipro River. He said that no number of small generators could meet the demand in the area, noting that city officials should have built a more extensive heating and power network years ago, when Russia first started attacking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
“We have an emergency: Kyiv’s CHP-6 plant stopped supplying heat, and Troieshchyna has been fully without heat for two days,” Bakhmatov said. “About 700 apartment buildings are currently without heating.”
City officials said that evening that fewer than 900 residential buildings in Kyiv still lack central heating.
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