Ukrenergo tightens power supply restrictions for whole of Tuesday

MOSCOW. July 16 (Interfax) - The Ukrainian national power grid operator Ukrenergo has ordered applying hour-by-hour outage schedules simultaneously to four categories of consumers for the whole of Tuesday, thus cancelling its previous directive on cutting power supply to three categories from 2:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Ukrainian media reported with reference to regional power operators.

"An instruction has come from Ukrenergo to apply hour-by-hour outage schedules to four categories until the end of the day," media reported with reference to the Ivano-Frankovsk regional power operator's post on its social account.

DTEK, the Rovno, Lvov, Chernigov, Sumy, Nikolayev, and Volyn regional power operators posted identical announcements on their social accounts on Tuesday morning.

At the same time, the Poltava regional power operator has applied emergency power supply restrictions to three categories of consumers since 9:00 a.m.

As reported with reference to Ukrenergo, power consumers not listed among critical infrastructure entities are divided into six categories in each region. Power supply restriction to three categories means that around half of all consumers are cut off from power supply, and four categories include simultaneously around 70% of all consumers in each region during a certain period.

Later on Tuesday, media reported referring to regional power operators that, in addition to the Poltava region, emergency power outages started being applied because of the heat also in the Sumy, Kharkov, and Dnepropetrovsk regions.

"Due to the abnormally hot weather in the Kharkov region, emergency outages have been applied in all districts along with hour-by-hour outage schedules," the Kharkov regional power operator reported.

"Emergency power outages have been applied in the Dnepropetrovsk region in view of growing electricity shortage. Hour-by-hour schedules are not applied," DTEK Dnepr Power Grids said.

Ukrenergo later added the Kirovograd region and the Kiev-controlled parts of the Zaporozhye and Donetsk regions to the list of parts of Ukraine where emergency outages were applied.

Ukrenergo said shortage in the power grid has increased as equipment at one of the power infrastructure elements failed early on Tuesday.