On March 29, an agreement between NPC Ukrenergo and fifteen members of the European Network of Electricity Transmission System Operators (ENTSO-E) entered into force. This is multilateral emergency aid between Ukraine and EU countries. This is stated in the statement of the Ukrainian national energy company.
Ukraine’s energy system operator informed that the EU promised to supply Ukrainian power lines during a blackout, so Ukrenergo will contact partners if necessary. Before that, Ukraine could only rely on electricity supplies from four EU countries (Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania), with which it borders directly, Ukrenergo pointed out.
Note that such assistance is different from imports – it is an emergency measure to overcome emergency situations that cannot be foreseen in advance. Technically, the capacity of flows from the EU can slightly exceed 2 GW. However, the shortage of electricity on the territory of Ukraine can be 2 times greater, and one of the main problems is not so much the lack of electricity itself, but the failure of distribution substations that loop the entire energy system and connect the regions of Ukraine. .
On March 30, Ukraine’s Energy Ministry announced that the country’s energy system was operating with reserve capacity to meet all consumer needs. At the same time, in some localities of the Odessa and Chernihiv regions, short-term power outages are still possible.
We remind you that at the beginning of November 2022, the representative of the European Commission, Tim McPhee, declared that the EU intended to provide emergency assistance to Ukraine to restore its energy network, in particular by providing certain volumes of electricity instead of importing it from that country. He clarified that the Ukrainian energy system is already connected to the EU and that small “energy exchanges” have already taken place.
Indeed, the connection of the Ukrainian energy system to the EU was completed in early summer 2022 to export electricity from Ukrainian territory. In August, the EC informed that it intended to increase the volume of electricity imports from Ukraine to the EU to 2 GW or more next winter.
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