Hour-by-hour outage schedules in Ukraine to be applied round the clock on Tuesday - Ukrenergo

MOSCOW. July 9 (Interfax) - A substantial shortage of power generation capacity in Ukraine has prompted the national grid operator Ukrenergo to call off its plans to measure the actual level of power consumption in each region of Ukraine on July 9 to 24.

"On July 9, restrictions will be applied for all regions of Ukraine during the entire day," Ukrainian media quoted Ukrenergo as saying on its social account.

Regional power operators will restrict power supply simultaneously to two categories of consumers from 5:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., to four categories from 4:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., and to three categories during the other time slots.

The company earlier planned to measure the actual level of consumption and, using this information, to lift restrictions for each region on a particular day according to special schedules in the period between July 9 and 24.

"The measurements have been cancelled because of a considerable capacity shortage in the power grid and growing consumption due to the heat. In reply to numerous requests from regional power operators, Ukrenergo is calling off the planned measurements during said period. In these conditions, regional power operators would be unable to observe the uniformity principle in restricting consumption during measurements in a given region," it said.

Ukrenergo said it would conduct such measurements later this summer, when the power grid condition allows for this and when air temperature decreases. Measurements are needed to be able to distribute capacity available in the grid between regions more evenly and accurately, it said.

Regional power operators warned consumers that the outage schedules could be adjusted as Ukrenergo might update its forecasts based on the power grid's actual condition.