Half Ukraine’s power is knocked out; winter is coming

livemint.com:

The Economist visited, says that 90% of their generating capacity has been destroyed this year. Waves of attacks since March have targeted thermal and hydro plants as well as, for the first time, solar-energy installations. As Russia struggles to make any serious gains on the battlefield, power lines have become the new front line.

Before the invasion, Ukraine’s generating capacity was 36 gigawatts (GW) of electricity. Russia targeted its electricity infrastructure in late 2022, and half of that capacity had already been lost—either occupied, destroyed or damaged—before the attacks renewed this year. Ukraine had managed to restore some capacity, and last winter managed to just about keep the lights on, restoring capacity almost to the 18GW then needed.

But this year’s attacks have destroyed 9GW of capacity. Pretty much all that is left comes from nuclear power stations, which the Russians have refrained from attacking. The chug of generators has returned to Kyiv’s streets and there are power cuts in every Ukrainian city.

Russian attacks continue. There are not enough air-defence batteries to knock out all the missiles. Now what? Ukraine currently imports 1.7GW from the EU; this could be increased to around 2GW or so, according to more optimistic predictions, but transmission constraints mean imported electricity cannot provide more than an incremental boost.

In the short term there is some hope that the damaged power stations can be repaired sufficiently by this winter to produce another 2-3 GW of capacity. Ukrainian engineers are scouring Europe for second-hand equipment from decommissioned Soviet-type power stations. It is unclear how realistic this is.