From December 16, new, updated electricity blackout schedules started in Ukraine. The main goal of the innovations is to reduce the number of consumers who remain without electricity more than necessary and to make the process of disconnections more predictable for all regions.
Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the Energy Research Center, said that the new approach involves a more accurate distribution of the load on the power grid and the creation of fair conditions for consumers. According to him, earlier, when it was necessary to reduce consumption by 250 MW, 400 MW were often turned off, which led to unnecessary inconvenience for people who could remain with light.
Now each group of consumers will be divided into two subgroups, which will allow disconnecting only the number of people who are really necessary to maintain the stable operation of the energy system. This means that an additional 50-100 thousand people will be able to stay with electricity.
In addition, the new approach makes it possible to significantly speed up the shutdown process, since most operations are performed manually, and the division into subgroups simplifies this work. Energy workers will be able to invest in 30 minutes to implement schedules.
According to the updated rules, each consumer will have at least 3.5 hours of electricity between outages. The schedules also take into account differences between weekdays and weekends, making outages more predictable.
Thus, the new shutdown schedules promise to make Ukraine's energy system more efficient and comfortable for consumers. However, in the event of accidents or damage to power lines, schedules can be changed quickly to adapt to new conditions.
