‘We won winter battle in energy war with Russia’ says Ukraine boss

Despite relentless missile attacks, Ukraine has kept lights on, resumed exporting power to Europe and restarted work on its first windfarm

The chief executive of Ukraine energy company DTEK has claimed victory in what he called the “winter battle of our energy war with the Russians”.

Speaking at a press conference today, Maxim Timchenko outlined the terrible toll inflicted on the country’s energy infrastructure in the past months.

More than 1000 missiles were fired at energy facilities, with 250 hitting their targets.

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All thermal and hydropower plants were shelled and 43% of the country’s power lines were damaged, causing several cities to suffers outages lasting for days.

DTEK suffered damage to 1502 pieces of power generating equipment and 10,297 pieces of distribution equipment.

However, Timchemko added that 80% of damaged power grids have been repaired.

“Winter season is over in Ukraine,” he said. “We have more than enough light and we feel very comfortable in our houses.

“So basically, I can confirm that we won this winter battle in our energy war with the Russians.”

He said the last few months had been the country’s most challenging winter, because of the unprecedented assault on infrastructure.

“No European power system has experienced such large scale destruction,” he said.

Yet he said Ukraine’s energy resilience was most evidenced by the fact that yesterday (April 11) it had resumed exporting electricity to the rest of Europe – something he added “nobody would have expected in back in November”.

Between October and March, DTEK Grids restored electricity to 3.2 million families in the Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions.

In Kyiv alone, 198 teams worked daily to bring power back online.

Timchenko highlighted another energy success story for Ukraine: it has resumed construction of its first windfarm.

The Tyligulska windfarm is being built in collaboration with Vestas and when complete will have a capacity of 500MW.

Construction initially stated last year but was forced to stop for winter.

However, work recommenced in March with 19 of Vestas’ 6MW turbines being installed, comprising 114MW.

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