Protect, speed up and finance – three key elements in preparing for the heating season

This was the conclusion reached by experts at the panel discussion ‘Winter is coming. What do we have today and what will it be like tomorrow?’, moderated by Olena Pavlenko, President of DiXi Group.

The discussion brought together representatives of the government, public and private companies, the transmission system operator and the expert community as part of the event ‘The Future of Ukrainian Energy. Dialogues with NV’.

“There is an acute shortage of generation and imports to fully meet our electricity needs,” says Olena Pavlenko.

However, everyone is working to change this situation: an active campaign is underway to restore damaged power plants and find the necessary equipment to create a back-up generation.

“All branches of government are systematically working on a comprehensive solution,” said Deputy Minister of Energy of Ukraine Mykola Kolisnyk, “This also includes air defence, without which it doesn’t matter what we build or construct, and money”.

“With the support of the National Bank of Ukraine and other banks, the government has provided simple technical solutions that guarantee energy independence, i.e. no blackouts. They can be implemented in both private and multi-storey buildings,” says Mykola Kolisnyk.

Dmitriy Sakharuk, Executive Director of DTEK, said: “We expect speed from the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and all those involved in our recovery. It needs to be multiplied by 100, so we can do something in all the reconstruction processes without exception.”

“Ukrenergo has almost completed the first stage of the second level of protection of the key protection elements of its substations and has been working on the second stage for two weeks now,” says Yuriy Boyko, member of Ukrenergo Supervisory Board. This is a guarantee that we will maintain the integrity of the power system, because with such generation losses, the role of the trunk network increases dramatically.

The Ukrenergo board member stresses: ‘The massive destruction of generating facilities will not go unnoticed by consumers, and it will not be possible to rebuild everything. At least for the next two winters, we will definitely be living under certain restrictions, so the level of energy independence should certainly be increased, it is relevant and will remain so”.

“We all have to learn to be very economical with all resources. And not only energy resources, such as gas, electricity and water,” says Roman Malyutin, CEO of Ukrgasbank.

“Such a non-renewable resource as time also needs to be frugal,’ emphasises the Ukrgasbank CEO. ’We must use it very efficiently, as this will help us prepare for the winter.”

“It will be difficult. Let’s rely on ourselves, but we know that hundreds of thousands of people are trying to do everything to ensure that we can use electricity as much as possible in winter. Let’s do it responsibly, because we are still our common country,” concludes Olena Pavlenko.