Ukrainian energy officials on Wednesday said they had no choice but to introduce emergency and scheduled blackouts after losing at least 40% of the country’s power generating capacity following days of devastating Russian cruise missile and drone strikes.
“Unfortunately, according to new data, about 40% of the total infrastructure and our generating capacities are really seriously damaged,” Oleksandr Kharchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s energy minister, said in a statement broadcast on national television.
“Restoration and repair work is ongoing, but miracles are possible only to a certain extent.
“Therefore, we should expect not only emergency but also scheduled outages today and tomorrow in order not to overload the grid.”
NPC Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s national energy company, on Wednesday called for the “understanding and support” of its energy users as they have been forced to introduce consumption restrictions following the missile attacks.
Ukrenergo said the “consumption restrictions may be applied throughout Ukraine from 7:00 a.m. to 22:00 p.m.” Thursday.
“The outages will be alternate — the duration of the outage is also determined by the regional power distribution company, but not more than 4 hours,” the statement said.
“The enemy, who cannot compete with the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the battlefield, attacked the civilian energy infrastructure again. Therefore, tomorrow we will apply controlled and carefully calculated restrictions to consumers, which we must implement to make the system work in a balanced way,” the power company said.