Improved physical protection, energy efficiency, more sustainable distributed generation, and local grids development – Bohdan Serebrennikov about energy “lessons learned”  during the wartime

Deputy research director at DiXi Group Bohdan Serebrennikov took part in the Spanish Energy Global Expo & Congress. The expert spoke about lessons learned during the full-scale war and solutions for better resilience and future reconstruction. 

His online speech was focused on critical challenges for the energy resilience of Ukraine and the opportunities for local generation development. 

«The large energy system that Ukraine currently has appears quite vulnerable to attacks – while, for instance, hitting some critical nodes of the power system could heavily disrupt the electricity supply in big territories of the country. Thus, as a potential reasonable solution, we need to develop more sustainable distributed generation and local grids (particularly microgrids) to ensure better resilience of the whole power system and of the local communities», emphasized the expert during his speech.

According to him, one of the prospective supporting schemes and models for active consumers to participate in the electricity market while ensuring better security and reliability of electricity supply is the self-production (self-consumption) scheme. 

However, DiXi Group found out that most small-scale renewable installations we already had installed by households and some local facilities actually were not able to operate w/o an external grid operation.

So, in this regard, the possible solution would be more sustainable power setups – for instance, the combination of PV panels + hybrid inverter + battery to ensure self-production and consumption of electricity even under grid disconnection. 

The expert also mentioned the draft concept of the government’s dedicated state economic program, which is aimed to support the deployment of those solutions through 2030. The program will cover households and critical infrastructure facilities (water supply and water drainage utilities, district heating systems, hospitals, etc.) to ensure their more reliable and affordable electricity supply. 

«This should be implemented first of all on the level of local communities and households. We are confident that, as an initial phase, the local communities should hold comprehensive energy audits and produce so-called local energy plans at least for a ten-year period. Those plans will be the foundation for further practical projects’ implementation in a consistent manner and attracting required investments», Bohdan Serebrennikov stated.

DiXi Group is currently working with selected communities to realize pilot projects for producing such energy plans.

Another lesson learned that Bohdan Serebrennikov mentioned is not on the supply but demand side. Ukraine has ample energy efficiency potential and demand-side management (DSM) potential not yet been utilized. For instance, only 12% of households are equipped with smart meters. A slightly better situation is in the business sector; however, nearly 20-25% of non-household consumers are equipped with such meters. Thus, the energy system’s sustainability and resilience should be ensured by improved utilization of all the technical, organizational, and behavioral options, leading to better energy efficiency and DSM. This should be implemented first of all on the level of local communities and households. 

The best practical case is one of our cities – Zhytomyr, with more than 200,000 citizens, which several years ago, produced a 100% renewable energy plan for the city, envisaging intensive energy efficiency actions and renewables rollout with a focus on available local energy resources.

The expert emphasized that «Ukraine has best practices and a huge potential for their future rollout throughout the whole country, primarily on the level of local communities. And we invite investors and implementers of such projects to work in Ukraine and to be the first».

DiXi Group’s speech was preceded by introductory remarks from the Honorary Consul of Ukraine in the Valencian Community, Pablo Gil Lopez, who attended the Congress on behalf of the Consulate General of Ukraine in Barcelona.

We are grateful for the invitation to the organizer of the event, the director of the non-profit organization “Cluster Energia Comunidad Valenciana”. 

The 2023 Energy Global Expo & Congress is a meeting place for energy experts at national and international levels, addressing important challenges in the field of energy and climate, including for Ukraine.