By KYIV. Jan 10 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Power cuts to the population after a short pause for the weekend, when it was possible to reorient business consumption volumes to residential customers, will continue and may become more severe, said Oleksandr Kharchenko, the director of the Energy Industry Research Center.
"If the industry did not work on holidays and there was an opportunity to better supply private consumers, then this will not always be the case. Now the working week begins, and planned outages for the population will become more noticeable, because the generation deficit has not gone away, the problems in the high-voltage network have not gone away, substations are damaged or completely destroyed, and it is impossible to change this situation quickly," Kharchenko said on the air of the national telethon.
At the same time, he noted that the shutdown is also significantly affected by frosty weather, in which consumption increases markedly and requires additional capacity, which is not enough primarily due to shelling damage, as well as due to old equipment.
At the same time, the expert called it a positive moment that the work carried out by power engineers to restore networks and generation makes it possible to turn off consumers in a planned mode with a fairly low number of emergency shutdowns. Although, according to him, it is difficult to give guarantees that this will continue to be the case.
"There are no guarantees that new emergencies will not arise due to frost or new attacks. I am sure that there will be problems," the expert warned.
He stressed that the situation with energy supply remains difficult, and the shortage of power is tangible, especially in Kyiv region.
At the same time, Kharchenko called the main goal of power engineers a faster restoration of the energy system than Russian terrorists can carry out the following attacks.
"Over the past few weeks, we have been able to maintain a higher pace of recovery than their rate of breaking the power grid," the expert summed up.
At the same time, Kharchenko pointed to a large number of generators of various capacities and other equipment imported to Ukraine, including as humanitarian aid, which will support the energy supply of the population and critical infrastructure in case of damage to the energy system.
The expert also urged Ukrainians not to forget about the need to save electricity, despite the blackouts.
