There are emergency power outages in Ukraine due to bad weather: strict restrictions will apply

There are emergency power outages in Ukraine due to bad weather: strict restrictions will apply

In Ukraine today, July 15, strict restrictions on electricity consumption are applied throughout the day. This means that hourly blackout schedules are in effect from 00:00 to 24:00. The most severe blackouts in four stages, with many hours without electricity, will begin at 16:00 and last until the end of the day. In addition to planned outages, emergency power outages occur in six regions due to bad weather.

The format of the restrictions was reported to Ukrenergo . “From 16:00 to 24:00, oblenergos will apply four queues of shutdowns simultaneously. During other hours, three queues of shutdowns will operate,” the message says.

For comparison, on the weekend of July 13-14, outages affected 2-3 lines at the same time, that is, the situation became more complicated. “Due to the abnormal heat in Ukraine and Europe, according to the forecast, consumption has reached its maximum and significantly exceeds the capacity of Ukrainian power plants to cover it,” the energy workers explained.

At the same time, due to weather conditions, 446 settlements in six regions - Kyiv, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, Ternopil, Lviv and Rivne regions - were cut off from power. For example, in the Lviv region, thunderstorms with gusts of wind left 214 settlements without power supply. 102 of them are completely without power supply, and 112 are also partially. Restoration work is underway, said the head of the Lviv RMA Maxim Kozytskyi on the morning of July 15.

Four queues of blackouts: what does this mean?

During planned power outages, Ukrenergo announces daily how many lines will be turned off simultaneously in each region. For example, on July 15 these are three and four turns.

In essence, this is technical information for oblenergos. But Ukrainians should understand: the more queues, the more hours without power there will be on a given day.

There is a conditional relationship between the number of queues of power outages and the number of hours without it:

• 1st queue of schedules means 4 hours of outages per day (total from 24 hours);
• 2 queues – 8 hours of restrictions per day;
• 3 turns – 12 hours without light per day;
• 4 queues – up to 16 hours of restrictions per day.

Ukrenergo explained how exactly to distribute these outages during the day, regional power companies calculate and create schedules for each region. In a number of regions, for example, there is a system with different types of “blackout zones in schedules.”

Such schedules are used by DTEK in Kyiv, Kyiv region, Odesa region, Donetsk region and Dnipropetrovsk region. Zones in the tables with shutdown schedules are indicated in different colors:

• the dark gray zone is the time when there is definitely no light;
• light gray zone – blackouts are possible;
• white zone – light is guaranteed.

That is, in these regions, the number of shutdown queues directly affects the use of “light gray zones”. Turning off the lights in these zones usually begins at the hours when Ukrenergo announces three rounds of shutdowns.

If they say that 1-2 groups/queues need to be disabled, then this means that the disconnection will occur within the dark gray slots at a specific point in time. That is, for example, if on Wednesday from 18:00 you need to limit consumption to two stages, then according to the schedules this is a shutdown of the 3rd and 4th groups. 4th group (dark gray zones) and 1-2 groups (light gray zones),” explained Sergei Kovalenko , CEO of the Yasno energy company.